THE IMMIGRATION POLICY.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 54, 3 February 1872, Page 15

THE IMMIGRATION POLICY.

We take the following from the Dunedin “Evening Star” of the 28rd . —lt now, we presume, pretty generally known that the General Government have undertaken the entire charge and management of immigration for the whole colony, under the provisions of the Immigration and Public Works Act, 1870, Amendment Act, 1871. This province has not escaped their attention, and the Hor. W. Reeves, Resident Minister for the Middle Island, with the assistance of Mr J. E. March, Chief Immigration Officer of Canterbury, have been inspecting the Immigration Barracks here and the Quarantine station. Our readers will not be surprised to learn that both are condemned as unsuitable. We are glad to learn that it is not intended to bring persons into the colony without making arrangements adapted in every respect for the preservation of health, order, and discipline on their landing. And to this end it is thought desirable to place the Immigration Barracks in such a position as to insure proper conveniencies until the immigrants are placed in suitable situations. We need not say that in common with the general opinion of Dunedin, the present barracks are condemned as altogether unfit for the purpose, and the site is considered too valuable and too limited in extent to justify the construction of new ones upon it. We learn that it is designed to obtain a suitable site, convenient to the town, on the line of the Port Chalmers Railway, and to erect Immigration Barracks, so arranged as to afford means of classification., with separate compartments for each sex. It is intended to utilise the present barracks on Quarantine Island, and so to alter and add to them as to make them suitable for preseving and restoring the health of any immigrants who may be obliged to be plaeed there. It is also proposed to establish an Immigration Office in Dunedin for the purpose of facilitating; communication between the immigrants and employers of labor, and generally to look after the welfare of the new arrivals. We venture to express the opinion that the arrangements proposed to be adopted! by the General Government, an outline of which we have laid before us, will prove a great boon to all classes, and will tend in an eminent degree to facilitate settlement on a healthy and permanent barig.