Police Join Migrants’ Queue

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31168, 19 September 1966, Page 17

Police Join Migrants ’ Queue

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) LONDON, Sept. 18.

British police have joined the long queue of doctors, professional soccer players, aircraft workers and scientists wanting to emigrate to dodge Britain’s economic squeeze, the Associated Press reported.

Most want to go to the United States in search of better pay and conditions. Others are headed for Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand for the same reasons British newspapers coined the phrase “brain drain” when scientists started heading for America in recent years.

But policemen are something different. A recruiting campaign for the Toronto Metropolitan Police revealed that more than 1200 British “bobbies” want to leave and settle in Canada. “We were astounded at the response,” said Mr Bud Monette, immigration officer at the Ontario agent-general’s office in London. “We even had applications from Scotland Yard men.”

The Government, however, is more concerned with the increasing numbers of doctors who want to emigrate. 500 To Leave

An estimated 500 general practitioners and young hospital doctors are expected to leave the State-run National Health Service this year for the United States.

A'.Liv.'gh Britain still gets a large intake of doctors from

India and other Commonwealth countries, the drain on home' doctors is seriously hampering the health service. The Health Minister, Mr Kenneth Robinson, lashed out yesterday at young British hospital doctors who train in Britain, then go to the United States, calling them “cynical and selfish.”

He spoke the day after a record 600 doctors sat for an examination set by the United States Educational Council for foreign medical graduates.

Like the police, the doctors claim they are underpaid and overworked.

The drain on top British talent has even entered the sports field. A delegation of the newlyformed National Professional Soccer League of America descended on these shores last month seeking players and coaches.

As a start they signed the Welsh international star, Phil Woosnam, as managercoach for a projected Atlanta club and offered Eric Taylor, manager of the Sheffield Wednesday Club, the post of executive secretary of the new United States league at a salary of 30,000 dollars a year. Other offers are expected to follow.

The trek of British scientists and aircraft workers to the United States has been going on since the end of World War II and is now ac. cepted as a natural phenomenon.