IMMIGRATION TROUBLES.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5148, 6 July 1927, Page 3

IMMIGRATION TROUBLES.

WRONG TYPE LURED FROM HOME. STUDY BY ENGLISHWOMAN. Many immigrants to New Zealand are lured away from Home by being given a wrong impression of the opportunities and possibilities to be found in New Zealand. That was a statement made to a reporter by Miss M. Luty, who is at present on a visit to Dunedin in the course of a tour of New Zealand. Miss Luty was associated with the textile industry in England in connection with trade union work for a number of years, and she has also bee-n connected with' politics as a member of the Independent Labour Party and National Labour Party. Some time ago she set out to visit various British Dominions with the bbject oif obtaining first-hand knowledge of. the actual conditions encountered by immigrants to a new country. She is working her way round by taking domestic work, and though she is not travelling under the auspices of the Labour movement at Home, she is w’orking in its interests. Miss Luty already has visited Canada and practically completed her tour of Now Zealand, after which she will proceed to Australia. Miss Luty has been in New Zealand since January, so that she. has had a good Opportunity of reviewing the- position as it affects immigrants. She said that even people who came from working classes were often better off at Home, where- there was some chance- of making a living. They had t.o sell all they possessed to reach New Zealand, and when they arrived they found conditions entirely different from what they had been led eo expect. “The trouble is that by your advertisements and propaganda at Home yqu are attracting the wrong type of people.” sai(l Miss Luty. She added that shipping companie-s cared little what type was attracted, so long as they received the passage -money. She asserted that a., good deal of misrepresentation had something to do with the. present position in New Zealand in regard to immigration and unemployment.

“Wages for domestic workers in jCanada are good, a.nd better than in New Zealand, but the problem confronting domestics is not that of conditions, but of. the frightful snobbery that is met with,” she. says. “This is true of New Zealand also. I am sorry to say that this snobbery is often on the part of English people.”