UNDESIRABLE IMMIGRANTS.

Evening Star, Issue 3751, 2 March 1875, Page 3

UNDESIRABLE IMMIGRANTS.

To the Editor. Slß,—ln your issue of Friday last there is a paragraph complaining of so many bad characters finding their way to this country as Government immigrants; and you quote from the Herald,’ expressing wonder how so many city arabs pass muster as desirable emigrants. Now, to me, and I have lately observed some of the ordeal, it is no wonder at all. Surely grown-up, smart city arabs may pass muster where an old man of some fiftyfive or sixty years, with an older sister, makes application, and receives from the agent the necessary forms of certificates, gets them filled up and signed by a pawnbroker, who personates a minister, but writes “ Eev” before his name—-which creates the suspicion in the mind of the agent to the extent of writing inquiries; but that suspicion is soon allayed by the explanation of a_ mistake—and old J and his sister find their way here at the Government expense, without further challenge—himself a pest to society and his sister a burthen to the country, as I am told he deserted her since coming here. Another shipmate told me that the minister who signed his papers never had known or spoken to [him before. I shall probably revert to this subject some other time, and give you some fuller extracts from my notes on the selection and treatment of emigrants ; but for the present a case is pending in the Courts, and I might trespass on the precincts of the evidence to be given. However, I might say that the conditions of selection now in practice are not likely to secure the fittest class of people for this country, particularly from Scotland, where houses are rented, as a rule, by the year, and furnished to a greater extent than the working people of the sister countries do; so that the usual notice of acceptance at the eleventh hour is more likely to suit the light, unsettled, risking, gambling class of characters than those of a more sure, staid, and settled turn of mind.. Then much could be done to improve the present system of selection by having proper agents to visit the homes of intending emigrants, and getting'at their real character and habits as far as inquiries of neighbors, &c., might serve, rather than by the certificate of ministers, who, if they know anything about the applicants at all, know but the dressed side of their _ character. No doubt this would entail a little more trouble in country districts ; but a really good agent in this way could improve the class, if not the number of immigrants, and render my cognomen less a term of reproach.—l am, &c., A New Chum. Dunedin, March 1.