Foreign Immigrants

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 19985, 10 July 1939, Page 14

Foreign Immigrants

Sir,—Until recently, the policy of the New Zealand Government in regard to immigration lias been to closely examine the credentials of non-British people seeking admittance to this country. Of late, however, quite a number have been welcomed, whose main qualification seems to be that they had got in bad with some Government which, for the time being, is a sort of “black beast” to us, the British people. It lias often happened That refugees from one country have proved exemplary citizens to the nation that received them, but there are glaring instances of their importing and practising the traits that got them into trouble at home.

A cable in Friday's Herald brings up a case in point. About the beginning of the century, the Dukliobors, a strange religious sect in Russia, were at loggerheads with the then Government of that country, one of the matters in dispute being •..heir strong objection Jo military service. Russia at the time was an accursed country and anything in the shape of compulsory military service an accursed thing in the eyes of British people. The wrongs of this "peaceful, industrious, agricultural -sect” were widely advertised, and, at considerable expense, a good many thousand of them were settled on the prairie country of Canada. Ever since, they have, at intervals, been providing some item like that of the other day. Their objection to military service and to control of any kind, seems as hearty as ever,

and the practise of their peculiar religious rites has been a perennial trouble to the Canadian police. It is safe to say that the presence of this

sect in Canada has been the cause of many native-born Canadians leaving the country. They are in a unique position in .that, if conditions at home do not suit them, it is the easiest thing in the world to cross the border.

This is not to . suggest that the present-day refugees are likely tc make trouble in the lands that shelte: them, but it is just as well not t<: get 100 many of them. Kipling, who once in a while, mixed a bit el

reason with his rhyme, wrote of the Arpencan: “1-lis easy unswepi hearth lie lends, from Labrador to Guadalupe, Till, elbowed out by sloven friends, he camps at sufferance, on

the stoop.” Lack of, education was the trouble with the Dukhobors; an excess of some kind of education may also make a person an undesirable citizen, and the objects of bur present solicitude are far from illiterate. J.P.H.