CHILD MIGRATION SCHEME

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25608, 24 September 1948, Page 8

CHILD MIGRATION SCHEME

100 CHILDREN ALREADY WAITING

There are already 100 children waiing in Great Britain to be included in the child migration scheme to New Zealand, which was announced yesterday by the Minister of Immigration (Mr A. McLagan), according to information which has been received by the general secretary of the Overseas League in New Zealand (Mr J. K. Milner) from the London headquarters of the league. The league welcomed and pledged its support to the scheme, said Mr Milner, yesterday. Since the mass evacuation of Briti ish children early in the war, the league had been actively engaged in immigration work, he said. Many •thousands of'British children had been placed in homes throughout the world at the expense of the league and the children’s foster-parents, but now that the Government had officially recognised child migration and had undertaken the expense of passage money, many more British children would be given homes in New Zealand. The Overseas League in Britain would be the. official organisation which would select child immigrants for New Zealand, said Mr Milner. According to a cable message received yesterday from London, the migration secretary of the Overseas League (Mr Cyril Bavin) said that New Zealand’s announcement that child migration could begin was a timely one. The league welcomed the decision as part of the policy of the distant Dominions to build up their population with people of British stock, he said.