THE BRITISH IMMIGRANT.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3048, 19 November 1908, Page 4

THE BRITISH IMMIGRANT.

It is interesting to note in view of the increased attention given to the question of Australasian immigration that during the past fifty years no less than 9,000,000 people have left the United Kingdom for foreign

countries, over two-thirds of this number having emigrated to places other than the British colonies. Within the past eighty years Ireland has supplied Amarica with about five million settlers. From the time of the great famine of 1845 there has been a continuous stream of emigrants across the Atlantic. A peculiar feature of Irish emigration lies n the fact that, compared with its own numbers, it leads the world, having in sixty years sent to America more people than it at present contains. America, Canada, and Argentina are receiving the bulk of the world's emigrants, while Australasia lags far behind. Last year America absorbed over a million, Canada 250,000, Argentina 200,000, and Australasia 12,000. The insignificant part played by Australasia is attributable to several causes. The first and" niosi important is the distance of Australia and New Zealand from the over-populated countries, which handicap was enhanced by the ignorance that prevailed abroad in regard to the resources of these colonies.