STATUS OF ALIENS

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 272, 12 August 1943, Page 4

STATUS OF ALIENS

Bill Passes House The British Nationality and Status of Aliens (in New Zealand) Amendment Bill was read a second time, put through the committee stage without amendment and passed by the House of Representatives yesterday afternoon. Moving the second reading the Minister of Internal Affairs, Mr. Parry, said that the Bill embodied the provisions of a similar enactment of the British Government, which asked for an assurance from New Zealand of reciprocal legislation. The present Bill provided for such reciprocity. It granted British status_ to aliens who joined up with the British forces, and thereby had the effect of reducing the period of residential qualification for British nationality. Mr. B'roadfoot (Opposition, Waitomo) said many alien refugees had made their homes in New Zealand. What was the position of aliens who had sought refuge in the Dominion and who had not joined the armed forces? he asked. He hoped some control was being exercised over aliens who had remained outside the forces and -were not naturalized and were purchasing property in the Dominion. Mr. Parry: That question does not come under the Bill. Mr. Broadfoot: No. But it raises the whole question of aliens. Government, members: No. It was time the whole problem of aliens was raised, said Mr. Broadfoot, who asked what the position was with aliens who were working in New Zealand in good jobs while New Zealand workers were serving overseas. The Minister of Justice, Mr. Mason, said the Bill accelerated the right of aliens serving with British forces to become naturalized. The Bill could not be used as an opportunity to discuss the whole complex question of alien nationals. At the end of the war the question of aliens must be carefully gone into.