Immigration and the Empire

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 92, 12 January 1935, Page 9

Immigration and the Empire

Sir,—-A recent correspondent to “The Dominion” refers to the stoppage of immigration as if we did England an injustice by putting a stop to immigration into this country. Would it not have been a far greater injustice to New Zealand if England had insisted on forcing us to admit immigrants when the only way in which these new arrivals could get work was by dismissing the old hands and sending them out on the road? That a great deal of this was done is shown by the fact that we received some seventy odd thousand immigrants, and to-day, only a few years later, we have about 80.000 unemployed costing the country some £4,000,000 a year to keep at work. Wherein was the wrong? In letting the immigrants in, or in shutting them out?

But apparently we have not learnt our lesson yet. Do those well-meaning people who are going about to bring farmers —not ordinary working men —out here realise that just as it was impossible to find work for the former immigrants without dismissing the old hands, so it will be impossible' to find farms for these new immigrants without putting the present occupants off their farms? For every new farmer put on. an old farmer, with probably far more experience, will have to be sent out on to the roads. —I am, etc., HANS C. THOMSEN. Masterton.