Good Response To N.Z. Immigration Campaign

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29336, 15 October 1960, Page 4

Good Response To N.Z. Immigration Campaign

[From the London Correspondent of “The Press”)

LONDON, October 8. The Hew Zealand Immigration Office in London has received an unprecedented response to its current campaign to increase the number of migrants to the Dominion.

In addition, to hundreds of personal calls and telephone inquiries, the office is now getting about 3000 letters a week from prospective migrants and an augmented staff is struggling to keep abreast of the flood. Soon the job will become even greater as the inquiries are translated into firm applications and the work of interviewing and Selection begins. Extra clerks are being engaged since over the few years the office strength has been cut while migration has been reduced to a trickle. A new selection officer will arrive in London soon.

Advertisements in daily and weekly newspapers, and in trade journals—for farm workers, herd testers and printing workers —have awakened new interest in New Zealand’s migration scheme. “The scheme is wider open than it has ever been before, though the emphasis is still on skilled workers,” said the chief migration officer in London, Mr. J. V. Brennan. “It is aimed to admit almost every type of skilled worker and the response has been greater than ever before.” The New Zealand Government has no longer a ship of its own for carrying migrants, but the shipping lines are satisfied that with the. new strips plying between Britain and New Zealand and the increased number of berths, there will be no trouble in finding room for more new settlers.

“We are being very frank with people about accomodation,” said said Mr Brennan. “We are issuing a leaflet on housing that puts the facts fairly and squarely. We have to say that the hope for rental accomodation is almost impossible and we set out all the schemes and methods for purchase and building, and the mortgage facilities. “A lot of people get housing through relatives, friends or employers, but the scheme now includes a drive for family people, young married couples; and it looks as' if we-will have some success. We are offering hostel accommodation for couples without children and we have not done this before.”

Special efforts continue to be made by the Migration Office and by private employers to encourage teachers, printing tradesmen and textile workers to go to New Zealand. The textile industry continues to make its own drive, but because of full employment in this field in Britain it is said it is very difficult to get single people to leave British industry. The largest numbers of migrants are still from the building and construction engineering trades. No particular effort is being conducted on the Continent, but a departure in the present campaign has been advertising in Ireland for skilled workers. The

appearance of the first notices in Irish newspapers resulted in about 100 inquiries within a day or two.

Although Ireland is itself making considerable efforts to establish industries to employ surplus skilled labour there are apparently no restrictions on New Zealand's efforts to lure workers away.