ADAPTABILITY PRIME QUALIFICATION FOR BRITISH IMMIGRANTS BEING SELECTED TO COME TO DOMINION

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 14, Issue 56, 28 October 1949, Page 5

ADAPTABILITY PRIME QUALIFICATION FOR BRITISH IMMIGRANTS BEING SELECTED TO COME TO DOMINION

Naturally, she spoke first of her special angle of immigration, the recruiting of nurses and nursing aides, but touched also on the broader aspects of the scheme whereby single ex-service men and women between the ages of 20 and 25 years are given free passages to New Zealand under two years engagements in various occupations with the chance of ultimately becoming New Zealanders if they like the idea as much when they have been here a ► while as they do when they leave their homeland. The young women include a number of trained nurses, nursing trainees, factory and clerical workers. Men are being recruited for various labouring jobs and heavy industries. Before they are accepted, all applicants are carefully sifted for their suitability, and are examined most carefully to make sure .(they are adaptable types. Adaptability All-Important That, Miss Cameron pointed out, is all-important. It is not everyone who would be able to fit into an entirely new life because, though many of us are inclined to regard ourselves as being quite as English as the English themselves, that is mot actually so. She found there was a much better response from men than from women, for a number of reasons. In the first place, there is ample work at good wages for young women in Britain just now. Also, in the age group required are naturally a high proportion of young women contemplating settling down to married life in their homeland. However,, though the girls were not , actually rushing the proposition, the •ones who were coming forward were of an excellent type and, from letters she had had from some already established here, they were settling down quite well.

“But,” she said earnestly, “I do wish more people would open their homes to these girls. You know, home-sickness is the worst kind of sickness there is. I’ve had it badly myself.” Housing The Barrier That led, naturally, to housing, which Miss Cameron considers one of the biggest barriers impeding New Zealand’s progress towards the 5-million population she is convinced this country could support. Not only is the housing shortage a bar to family immigration on a large scale, she claims, but it is an impediment blocking the fullest possible use of our present labour force, stopping as it does the free movement of qualified workers to places where their services are most needed.' “If we could speed up on housing,” she told the Beacon’s representative, “we could import shiploads of an excellent type of young married settlers—l don’t like the word ‘immigrant’.” They Are Told

We mentioned the few who come out here and bleat pathetically all over the place that the streets aren’t paved with gold like the High Commissioner said in London, and Miss Cameron replied that those people were probably a few un-.-adaptables who had slipped through the sieve and had found out after they got here that they just didn’t fit. But it was quite untrue for them to say they were not told the plain, unvarnished truth before they left. Our Government, she says, is most particular to maintain a full and up-to-date information service for intending immigrants, who are given a clear, factual picture of what they can expect in New Zealand. If they do not make use of the official information that is available, or listen to fanciful tales from partially informed and unofficial quarters, then the fault is not that of the New Zealand Government’s representatives in Britain. However, she said, the malcontents seemed- to be comparatively few. The Atlantis was bringing out '9OO settlers at every trip and making an average of not quite four trips a year. Most of them found conditions here compared favourably with the land they had left. Trade wages on the average would be a little better, though there was nothing like the English salary for executive jobs. In England today clothing and furniture were generally more expensive than in New Zealand, though the “utility” grades (standardised “austerity” patterns) would be cheaper.

Miss R. T. Cameron, Nursing Selection Officer for the New Zealand Government’s immigration scheme, who recently completed a two-year tour of duty in Great Britain, was at Whakatane yesterday, and spared close on an hour to retail some of her experiences and impressions to the Beacon. Keen observer, straight thinker and entertaining talker, Miss Cameron is an intensely interesting personality.