tzerland also made use of foreign labour in the post war period, whilst they initially imposed a lot of restrictions on foreign workers, by the 1970s foreign workers made up almost a third of the labour force (Castles and Miller, 1993, p69). Other countries that used foreign labour to relive labour shortages included the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Sweden. Whilst migrant labour made up roughly 9% of some post war European countries labour forces (Bali, 1997, p210), in the Gulf States it made up the "overwhelming majority of the work force: 70% in Kuwait, 80% in Qatar and 85% in United Arab Emirates" (Bali, 1997, p210) In all countries there is an acceptable threshold of immigration, and when the number of immigrants within a country goes over this conceptual limit, public opinion and government policy regarding immigration become negative. It is common for this threshold to be reached during periods of recession and economic decline. Arguments against immigration focus primarily on how immigrant labour displaces local labour due to immigrants being prepared to work for less wages and because of quota systems. "Nevertheless, it is true that in certain areas of employment Whites have suffered a lowering of job expectations as a result of the ethnic minority presence in Britain. This has been aggravated by the policy adopted by employers in the Public sector, and enthusiastically encouraged by governments, of 'positive discrimination'. Whereby ethnic minority members are hired according to a quota system, which takes no account of qualification or merit, and results often in better qualified white ...
