INFANT IMMIGRANTS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 May 1939, Page 2

INFANT IMMIGRANTS

BRINGING IN ORPHANS FROM BRITAIN. CONSIDERATION IN AUCKLAND. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) AUCKLAND, May 18. “Catch ’em young’.’ might have been an ideal slogan for a new kind of immigration scheme discussed today bj the council of the Auckland Chamber of Commerce. The idea mooted was that children not too young to travel and not too old to have strong ties with the country of their birth should be sent to New Zealand from orphanages in Britain to continue their upbringing here and then be trained, perhaps on the land, as citizens of the Dominion. The suggestion arose after the receipt of a communication from the Canterbury chamber favouring encouragement of immigration and investigation of the possibility of a baby bonus after, say, the second child. The president of the Auckland chamber, Mr A. Ely, said that Auckland had also taken a forward step on immigration along similar lines. “Had we years ago, and even today, done something for the men and women who raise families we would have achieved more than by tilting at the Government with suggestions, about bringing people from overseas, declared Mr Harvey Turner. He added that something constructive should be done for such men and women, j ; - 4 “It has always seemed to me a'pity that children are not sent from the orphanages in Britain to the various parts of the Empire and trained m rural districts,” said Mi”J. A. C. Al-. lum. Children could be sent out quite / young, at five, six or seven years of age. They should be transferred to our own orphanages, and philanthropic people who were at present helping to pay for their upbringing should be encouraged to continue to do so when the children reached New Zealand. Fine citizens were produced by orphanages. The council decided that the idea was worth investigating, and referred it to a committee to be appointed later.