The Dominion. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 15, 1936. IMPERIAL MIGRATION

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 94, 15 January 1936, Page 8

The Dominion. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 15, 1936. IMPERIAL MIGRATION

It is reported that the British Government will shortly announce the appointment of an Overseas Settlement Board to consider specific proposals for migration schemes within the Empire, and other matteis relevant to the question. The problem is as pressing as it is difficult: pressing, because of the questioning attitude adopted toward the British Empire and its spacious sparsely-populated territories by certain congested foreign countries demanding room for expansion, and difficult because of the amount of unemployment existing in the overseas Dominions. The British Government, fully aware of the nature of the unemployment problem in these Dominions, has refrained hitherto from raising with them the question of opening their doors to streams of immigrants. As fully aware, however, ot the growing intensity of feeling in overcrowded foreign countne.i against what is considered to be Britain’s dog-in-the-manger attitude in regard to her under-populated Dominions, the Government is obviously anxious to make a gesture of some kind that will justify the assertion that these empty spaces are needed for settlement by immigrants. The question of Imperial migration, if it is to be solved satisfactorily. must be approached scientifically. Migration of the kind that was such a striking feature-of the pioneering stage of Empire building belongs to the past. There can be no question of its revival, because the conditions which stimulated it no longer exist. In those days the British Isles were congested, social conditions were oppressive and inequitable, and the young colonies were crying out for settlers. To-day the population of the Old Country is approaching the stationary point. In a few years’ time, it is considered, it will have reached its maximum, and from then onward it will steadily decline. Accoi cling to the statisticians the total by 1976 will have fallen below do millions, a drop of 12 millions from its present figure. By that time the proportion of the age-groups will, it is estimated, be in the ratio of children, 12.5 per cent.; the younger workmg-age group, 36.0 per cent.; the older working-age group, 33.4 per cent.; old people. 17.5 per cent. Assuming that this prediction is sound, it would clearly be to the disadvantage of Britain to lose a sizeable proportion ot her young men and women overseas. I hey will be needed at Home. Any suggestion that the British Government in raising the question of migration now is seeking an opportunity of dumping the surplus population overseas may therefore be dismissed. The newer problem is to discover a plan for overseas settlement that will enable the Dominions to fill their empty spaces without seriously disturbing their own economic conditions.. I his implies a different class of migrant, a type of settler who will have sufficient resources to enable him to fit into the economic scheme of things without adding to the worries of the community. This type, of settler is likely to be curious and critical concerning the conditions of life in the country prepared to welcome him. 1 fixation? Cost of living? Price of land? Amenities of life? These are questions in which he will be properly interested. Migration policy, it has been said, cannot fly in the face of economic and social facts. For example, the number of emigrants from the United Kingdom between 1931 and 1933 was 118,747 less than the number of re-migrants, many of whom had been on the land from which they returned. It is not simply a question of obtaining the right type of s'ettlei. He must be retained. A satisfied immigrant is a good advertisement. “The first function of the United Kingdom and the Dominion Governments in regard to migration,” says a Round I able writer, discussing the future, “is to co-operate in promoting the prosperity ot the Commonwealth as a whole, especially by liberating trade between its different members. If advancing prosperity should create conditions under which migration on a considerable scale is possible, then it becomes their second function to ease the economic. frictions in its way. ... It is their duty to view their several problems of population and migration not from a narrow national standpoint, but in a setting of the wider welfare of that great community ot British nations to which they belong. ’