WONG HOW ESCAPES LIGHTLY

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 612, 14 March 1929, Page 8

WONG HOW ESCAPES LIGHTLY

DISCLOSURES made at the court yesterday, during the prosecution of Wong How, a Chinese gardener, for overstaying his term in New Zealand, leave the disquieting impression that the full story has not been told. The prosecutor’s statement that other Chinese have been taking money from the trespassers on the pretence of securing an extension of their time leads to the direct suspicion that some sort of an organised system exists. In this instance the victim—if he really was that-—had been shorn so effectively that he lacked the means either to book his passage or pay the fine. A sympathetic magistrate accordingly lowered the levy to £5 in order to save himself the painful necessity of sending the dilatory celestial to gaol. His clemency, though admirable when examined from a detached standpoint, will not withstand argument when it is realised that Chinese of this type—aided and abetted, as many believe, by permanent residents of the same race—have been evading the law for years. Other magistrates, more experienced in the inscrutable ways and devices of these folk, seem now to concur in the belief that a stiff fine or a term of imprisonment is the best corrective for their persistent disposition to linger. On November 26, 1927, a magistrate at Wellington came out into the open and declared emphatically his conviction that an organised system was in operation. At about the same time, when police and Customs officers in Auckland were engaged in a vigorous round-up, the local magistracy was coming to the same conclusion. Reports of wholesale importations of Chinese to Australia under dreadful conditions in the bowels of Dutch steamers stimulated the effort to trace the trespassers; but the ease of yesterday’s delinquent, who had overstayed his time by more than a year, and of others whose procrastination has covered still longer terms, is evidence that they were only partially successful. To meet the conditions revealed by the 1927 round-up, the imposition of a bond on responsible resident Chinese was specified. So far this measure has not demonstrated its success. There are nearly 3.500 Chinese in New Zealand, of whom more than a third live in the neighbourhood of Auckland. The hulk of them are good citizens, and some are valued and reputable members of the commercial community. To them the movements and expedients of the time-expired visitors are as mystifying as they are to the police. There is nothing so baffling as a Chinese with something to hide, and to trace every one of the unauthorised aliens would tax the wit and energies of a Sherlock Holmes.