THE ALIEN LAWS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 84, 6 April 1912, Page 5

THE ALIEN LAWS.

A PECULIAR POSITION. (Per Press Association.) Palmerston, April 5. There lias been in Palmerston North for the last three weeks Mrs Eliott, widow of an Englishman,'daughter of a Scotch father and grandfather and a Eurasian mother. Her father was a. - tea planter in Ceylon, as are her brothers. Mrs Eliott herself has two children in Ceylon. She came with Mrs George Stockwell, of Palmerston,' to nurse her grandchild, who was ordered from Ceylon as it was dying of dysentry and malaria, and brought the child over to New Zealand. The iparty came from Ceylon by the Orient line. No difficulty was anticipated on leaving Ceylon as, to her• being able, to return there. . . At, Fremantle: 'the, difficulties began under the alien law, and a bond for £loo wa| signed/;' From Sydney she desired to return to her home, but the shipping authorit•ies would notpermit it; on the grounds*-'.: that the undertaking was that she should come on to New Zealand, and that this arrangement must be fulfilled. She came here duly, but when it was proposed that she should return' the Orient Co. has jcommunicated' through the Union Steamship Corthat it cannot, under the alien law, take_ her back, and ,therefore., the Union Co. cannot take her to Sydney. The next effect is that a British subject, and wife and daughter of kh• Englisllman and Scotchman through three , generations, js blocked from going :Out of. the country because someone holds n if she should /not have come into it. Mrs Eliott is greatly concerned at the situation to which the Australian arrangements, as interpreted by the Sydney office of the:Orient.Co.,- has brought her. There is no difficulty on the New Zealand side, as the Union Co., if assured that it will be all right on the Sydney side, will take Mrs Eliott to that port. '