SMALL ENOUGH TO UNDERSTAND

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 11, Issue 29, 16 May 1947, Page 2

SMALL ENOUGH TO UNDERSTAND

AMERICAN SEEKS NEW COUNTRY The Immigration Division of the Department of Labour and Employment handles enquiries from abroad at the rate of about 200 a month. The Department’s special Immigration Section in the High Commissioner’s Office in London deals with hundreds of other enquiries, both verbal and written, from Great Britain and the Continent. Some time ago, a letter was received from an American officer in China, inquiring about the opportunities of settling in New Zealand. “I am not in search of a ‘good position’,” said the writer, who is a University graduate with honours. “I am in search of a country small enough to understand, a country which has a democratic form of government, and a country which speaks English; New Zealand is the only one which qualifies on all counts. “I am interested in participating as fully as possible in what one might call ‘national life’, and I can do this just as easily as, a day labourer; if America were only smaller, I would return there, but it is too large for me, and the sense of participation, of actually being part of an intelligent project, is lost.”