E/CN.4/1996/72/Add.4 page 10 43. Faced with the difficulty of finding housing in the public sector, many families seek housing in the private sector; however, they encounter other types of discrimination. For example, a study made by the Commission for Racial Equality and published in 1990 8/ noted that discriminatory practices, fed by prejudice, were widespread in the private rental housing sector: Blacks of equal or even higher income had more difficulty in finding housing than Whites. F. Political expressions of racism and incitement to racial hatred and xenophobia 44. The politicization of racism has been hindered by the resurgence of extreme right-wing parties such as the National Front and the British National Party, which, at the end of the 1970s and 1980s, achieved some success in elections. Incitement to racial hatred remains a source of concern but is difficult to define because it is carried out anonymously, for example, through graffiti on walls, tracts distributed in letter boxes and clandestine dissemination of racist and neo-Nazi publications. The militancy of small, extreme right-wing groups, though sporadic, is responsible for racist incidents. 45. The speeches of traditional right-wing politicians tend to incite xenophobia and exacerbate of latent social tensions when they present the immigration of “coloured” persons as a threat to national unity and refer to refugees from countries in the southern hemisphere as “bogus asylum-seekers” who come to Britain in order to profit from the material well-being of the British. Illegal immigrants are presented as a threat to British society, hence the brutality of the methods employed to expel them. G. Immigration and the right to asylum 46. The United Kingdom's once-open immigration policy has become increasingly restrictive for people originating from African and Asian States members of the Commonwealth. As stated above, in 1948, the British Nationality Act made no distinction in principle between subjects of the Crown. At the time, to be British was to enjoy the status of subject and all subjects had the right of free entry into the United Kingdom. The status of citizen of the Commonwealth was equivalent to that of British subject. 47. As a result of successive amendments to legislation, access to nationality and the right of abode of persons from, in particular, the new Commonwealth, 9/ has been made more difficult. The first limitations appeared in the Commonwealth Immigration Act of 1962, which made a distinction between holders of a British passport issued in the United Kingdom and those whose passports had been issued in the colonies. In 1968, in order to regulate the arrival of British Indians from Kenya, the Act was amended to state that only persons born in the United Kingdom, or with a parent or grandparent who had been born there, could enter Britain. The 1971 Immigration Act brought the regulations governing the right of entry for members of the Commonwealth into line with those that apply to foreigners and, in 1981, a nationality act confirmed the definitions of British citizenship set forth in the immigration laws.