Disgust At U.K. Entry Law

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29985, 21 November 1962, Page 18

Disgust At U.K. Entry Law

(NJ). Press Association) AUCKLAND Nov. 20. The immigration officer at Avonmouth was apologetic. “I hate to do this to you, Kiwi,” he said. In the passport of the chief steward of the Limerick, New Zealandborn Jim Mackay, went a stamp that intimated that he could not remain in the United Kingdom more than a week. Mr Mackay showed a reporter his passport today. “I’ve been 17 times to England and I’ve never struck anything like R before. I just sat down, wrote to my relations in England, dropped a line to the Home Office, and left for Germany the same day. “Look at the disgraceful thing. It makes you bitter. My father was killed fighting for Britain, but this sort of thing makes you think, doesn’t Jt?" Mr Mackay said that that

day the ship s bosun, a man from Eire, received a similar endorsement and a junior engineer, an Australian, also got a seven-day stamp. But the negro cook and a Pakistani steward, who had been domiciled in England at the time of the passing of the Commonwealth Immigrants’ Act, were not affected. So Mr Mackay went to Hamburg, where he obtained work as a detective at an international watch exhibition. While there he met a British trade union party that was studying the Common Market, and as a result the leader, Mr F. A. Smith secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers, took the matter up with his MP, Mr Woodrow Wyatt As a result of inquiries made by Mr Wyatt—and a question asked in the House erf Commons, said Mr Mackay, he received a letter to say that Mr Wyatt “thought he could get in now.” Entry certificates were issued to intending visitors

by the United Kingdom High Oommiesioner’s Office in New Zealand, but Mr Mackay said that he had been firflowing the practice at

years for seamen who had taken their discharge in England. This had been to stay for a while in England before seeking another ship. He felt that seven days was not enough time and certainly did not give a man time to visit his relations and have a holiday. The Germans gave Mr Mackay a work permit, and the British Sailors’ Society in Hamburg provided him with quarters. Eventually he obtained a port on a Polish ship bound for Indonesia, the Polish company then paying for bis flight to Sydney. Mr Mackay, whose home is in Turakina, south of Wanganui, said he did not blame the British people for the present afairtion He fett that the urgency of Britain's need to join the European Economic Community led to the political situation in which New Zealand had outlived its usefulness, “But rd like other New

Zealanders to be aware of what lies ahead of them if they set out to work their passages to England as they have hi the peat,” he said.