From Labour’s Viewpoint.

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 44, 14 May 1927, Page 14

From Labour’s Viewpoint.

Immigration Problems

Written for THE SUN,

By

H. E. Holland, M.P.

This is the eighth article of a \ weekly series contributed by the Leader of the Opposition, political head of the New Zealand Labour Party. It is as fair to Mr. Holland as it is to THE SUN to state that his pithy opinions are entirely his oxen and represent only the policy of the Labour Party; also, that, in their publication, the right of criticism is not surrendered.

\TEW ZEALAND now carries a population of less than a million and a half. Other things being equal it could easily carry ten millions. But before that could be accomplished the .Dominion’s land system and methods of primary production would have to be wholly reorganised, its control of finance and credit would have to be established, and its secondary production would need to be widely developed and stabilised. Immigration is now giving us a population increase of round about 12,000 a year, and the fact is contributing towards the creation of added problems, especially that of unemployment. Nothing could be more planless or lacking in business essentials than the manner in which we conduct our Immigration Department’s work. We set ourselves the task of enticing people to these shores; we provide some of the immigrants—now about 8.000 a year—with assisted passages; and when they arrive here we fling them on the labour market and leave them to work if they can find work or to want if they can’t find it. MISLEADING PROPAGANDA

Much of our propaganda in Britain is grossly misleading. We convey to the prospective immigrant that there is plenty of good land to be had here, and that it is only a short step from the hardship and poverty of Great Britain to comparative affluence in the Dominion. We never state in our immigration literature that all the best agricultural land has long since been taken up, and that the average farmer’s life is one of laborious effort and hardship. I have seen lithographic posters put out from the High Commissioner’s Office presenting the most glowing pictures of New Zealand farm life—pictures that appeared to me to be studied misrepresentations, clearly intended to make the immigrant believe that the picture represented the sort of life awaiting him upon his arrival here. I have read the speech of the present High Commissioner, Sir James Parr, at the opening of the Ipswich Empire Exhibition and Shopping Week, in which he told his hearers that New Zealand was “a land of cheap and comfortable living,” and declared his intention of initiating a strong campaign to further migration from Britain to this country. The British people—numbers of whom are deceived into coming out here—have a legitimate grievance against us because of our cruelly misleading propaganda, which in some cases has had disastrous consequences for both farmers and wageworkers from Britain. Even our own Publicity Department in New Zealand is not free from guilt in this connection. In its exceedingly well got up pamphlet, “New Zealand,” the Department misinforms intending immigrants in these words: “If employment and accommodation are desired this is arranged for, and no difficulty has yet been experienced by the Departmental officers in this respect.” In another sentence the statement is qualified by the intimation that it is one of the special functions of the Department to see that migrants are temporarily house and employed; but the impression first created is that accommodation and employment are found. Nothing is said about the cost of the temporary accommodation provided in the cities. I have known the migrant to have to pay 30s a week for an unfurnished room. “PLENTY OF LAND”

It is not only in the Government literature that the misleading propaganda is made. It appears in a multitude of privately-owned periodicals and newspapers. Not so very long ago the “Children’s Newspaper” was made use of to circulate an article with sensational headlines: “HappY New Zealand.—Greater Prosperity of the Little Dominion.—Saving a Million Pounds a Week for Ten Years.—A Land to be Happy In,” etc. After declaring that “the New Zealand people have saved a million pounds a week for the past ten years” (that is, £520,000 000 in all), the writer of this article proceeded to set forth that every New Zealander lias on the average £2,000 in property iind money, “some persons having much and some little: the beginners with little and the succesful ones with more.” Then he went on to say that “plenty of land awaits newcomers who are willing to learn and then to work,” and that many beginners would have to start as the original pioneers started, with Nature’s wilderness,

“but in perfect safety and with sure evidence of success around them.” It is such statements that have induced men and women to sell their store of

belongings in Britain in order to raise the passage money to come to this country and, in a number of cases, to suffer cruel disillusionment. It is true that numbers of these immigrants fall on their feet, but public men who are called upon to listen to the narratives of those who have had harrowing experiences know the extent to which the propaganda has resulted disastrously. NOMINATED IMMIGRANTS A fundamental weakness of the present immigration system is the manner in which immigrants are nominated by people resident in New Zealand. It is laid down that “the nominator must undertake to make provision for maintenance and employment after arrival in the Dominion,” but there is no attempt to enforce this condition. The immigrant is required to remain five years in the country, and to undertake to follow his or her calling for not less than a year. But the employer is not bound to provide a year’s work. The immigrant may find himself ox* herself with intermittent employment that may mean only six months’ work in the year, but, that fact notwithstanding, he or she must not leave the industry or calling stipulated in the document signed ia, London. I have personally handled the cases of coal miners who left Britain believing that the instrument they signed binding themselves to remain a year in the mining industry also bound the coal company to employ them for a year. They found upon arrival that they had no such guarantee, and some of them stood idle for three months and more. If, when they failed to secure work in the mine they had taken on farm work or any other kind of employment, the Government would have called upon each of them to refund at least £ 26. The man who comes out as a farm labourer is in exactly the same position. Likewise the domestic servant, with the exception that the latter is given a free passage, and will have to refund at least £37 if she fails to secure employment in domestic service and goes to another occupation. Furthermore, if a domestic servant should marry within a year of her arrival here, she would be required to make good the whole of her pasage money. The latter is an extremely doubtful condition. LABOUR AND IMMIGRATION My personal opinion is that nominated passages should be arranged only where there is a guarantee of employment. The immigrant who is to be bound to remain for a year at any particular calling should be given a guarantee of regular employment for that period. If that guarantee cannot bo given the immigrant should not be brought out. Such a guarantee could only be given :if there were no general problem of unemployment in the Dominion. The Labour movement of New Zealand does not object to people coming here from other countries. If and when they come voluntarily to these shores seeking a way to live and ready to render their quota of social service, the hand of welcome will be extended to them. But it is both fair and logical to insist—as the Labour Party does —that, when the public funds are used to bring people out here it must be a condition that there shall be permanent work for each Stateassisted immigrant at the standard rate of wages without the displacement of any New Zealander already employed or wanting employment. Neither is it unreasonable to stipulate that there must be dwellings available for the married immigrants and their families. IMMIGRATION AND UNEMPLOYMENT These conditions certainly do not exist in New Zealand at the present time. There is a shortage of about 20,000 houses and every new family that arrives means a new factor in the upward tendency of rents, not alone for the new arrivals, but for those who are already here. Every new arrival also means an accentuation of the evil of unemployment, and the Reform Government’s immigration policy has unquestionably contributed to the creation of the army of workless men which reflects the greatest unemployment problem the Dominion has known since the days of the late ’eighties of last century, with the soup-kitchens (sure indicators of a country’s economic plight) beginning to make their appearance in the large cities. Occasionally a protest is voiced that Stateassisted immigrants have been compelled to seek charitable aid from the Hospital Boards, and sometimes the immigrant is found making fruitless endeavours to get back to the old country. I am strongly of the opinion that whenever and wherever a hospital board is called upon to make provision for immigrants the board should be reimbursed out of the consolidated fund. The responsibility is one that legitimately belongs to the Government, and it should not be permissible for the Government to pass it on to the local bodies.