The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1898. IMMIGRATION RESTRICTION.

Auckland Star, Volume XXIX, Issue 227, 26 September 1898, Page 4

The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1898. IMMIGRATION RESTRICTION.

Tor ti.9 causa that lacfcs assistanca, For tho mong that needo resistance, Jot the future in tlio distanoa, And tha eood that vq oan do.

The passing- of the Immigration Restriction Bill through its final stages in the Legislative Council on Thursday afternoon gives a much better prospect of the measure becoming law this session than lately from the trend of affairs in Parliament seemed probable. The Bill is one of considerable importance to us in Auckland in that amongits provisions are clauses intended to check the influx of Austrians to our g'LLmfields. This trouble has been assuming" during- the last few months even more serious proportions than at the time of the sitting- of the Kauri Gum Commission about the beg-inning of the present year. Everyone who carefully considers the question cannot fail to appreciate the grave dan-g-er this undesirable immigration portends. It has been very conclusively shown that as soon as these Austrian dig-g-ers get together a few hundred pounds they return to Austria, where the sum the}' have earned in the colony is ample to set them up in a good way. The effect which the return of these Austrians to their own country has on their fellow countrymen is only too deplorably apparent in the gradually increasing tide of Austrian immigration. There are really no grounds for placing any limit on the proportions'this Austrian influx, if unhampered by legislative restrictions, may attain; and the question is one the aspect of which becomes more and more serious as -time passes. The Immigration Restriction Bill of the present session embodies the principle of the Natal Act, which provides for an educational test as a bar to undesirable immigration. The crux of the whole Act is the exclusion of immigrants who fail to comply with the provisions contained in the following clause : 'Any person who, when asked so to do by an officer appointed under this Act by the Governor, fails to himself write and sign, in the presence of such officer, in the character of an}' language of Europe, an application in the form numbered two in the schedule attached hereto, or in such other form as the Colonial Secretary from time to time directs, either generally for all case 9or specifically in specific cases.'

The schedule referred to in this clause, which we have quoted, is simply a form on which the immigrant has to write his or her full name and address, the wording being a declaration on the part of the applicant that he or she is not a prohibited immigrant within the meaning of the Act. Further prohibiting clauses provide against the admission of any person who is insane or an idiot, any person suffering from a loathsome or dangerous contagious disease, and anyone who has boen convicted of a crime punishable in this colony by imprisonment for two years or upwards. These are the vital clauses of the Bill, the remainder being principally machinery clauses, which are modifications of similar provisions in the Natal Act and 'The Alien Inning-ration Restriction Bill' of last session.

It is- the educational test clause which would exclude the majority of the Austrians ncnv flocking to the Northern gnintfields. Tho feeling in the Legislative Council may be taken as a fair indication of the manner in which the House of Representatives will receive this clause when the Bill comes before them. On Tuesday last the Hon. 11. Scotland, when the Bill was under consideration in the Council, moved that the educational test clause be |strack out. His motion, however, only received four supporting votes, the division being: Ayes 4; Noes 25. This was the only serious attack on the Bill in the Council, and it passed through the various stages without amendment of importance.

The fact of the Bill being put in the hands of the Minister of' Education, by whom it was introduced into the Legislative Council, is good evidence that there is a desire on the part of Ministers that it shall become law this session. . When it is brought before the Lower House there seems no reason to anticipate any more serious opposition to its passage than marked its treatment in the Council; and it will, in all probability, be one of the Bills on the Statute Book of 1898. Being modelled in principle on the Natal Act, as we have before stated, there is no chance of its meeting the fate of 'The Asiatic Restriction Act of 1896,' which failed to receive the Royal assent, and which, it may be remarked, is repealed by a clause in the 'Immigration Restriction Act, 1898.'