REFUGEE MIGRANTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 19, 24 January 1939, Page 7

REFUGEE MIGRANTS

PERSONAL CONTACT !

CENTRES IN EUROPE

PROCEDURE OF AUSTRALIA

(From "The Post's" Representative.)

SYDNEY, January 1,3.

Plans for a widspread system for making personal contact in Europe with prospective refugee migrants to Australia were announced by the Australian Minister of the Interior (Mr. McEwen). The scheme provides for the use of centres established in Europe by refugee associations for personal interviews with potential migrants;, The Commonwealth Government is working in close co-operation with the welfare associations and the necessary arrangements for the new system are nearing completion. Mr. McEwen denied reports from London that the present procedure rendered personal interviews impossible. He said that he did not suggest that the system was perfect, but the Department had been revising it week by week. Australia had always worked to an extent through the .British Consular offices, and personal interviews with prospective migrants had been the system always. "I feel that we are working steadily along lines which will give Australia the best type of refugee immigrant,* said Mr. McEwen. "Those to whom per* riiits already have been given are of • very desirable type." ' Intensive organisation is proceeding in Australia to cope with the influx of European refugees, from whom applications for assistance continue to poiir in. The Australian Jewish community has already collected £60,000 and the appeal for funds continues. The work includes technical and farm training. Other organisations are assisting non-Jewish refugees. The problem is becoming so complex that the need is urged for co-ordination of activities and some form of Government .supervision. By the beginning of last year, committees formed in New South Wales and the other States to administer funds had placed in employment the breadwinners of about 300 refugee families. With the taking over of Austria by Germany last March, the Federal Government and the Jewish Welfare Society, which was formed about that time, began to receive applications from an ever-ihcreasing number of people who wanted to come to Australia. The Jewish Welfare Society then decided to build up an organisation to be ready to guide arid assist the increasing number of arrivals. In New South Wales, its money is being expended in various ways to assist the refugees. Some are maintained until they find . employment, some are given retraining courses in technical jobs, and others are accommodated at a training farm established at Baulkham Hills. Many private citizens have come forward to help, and some have offered,' without personal knowledge of the refugees, to guarantee that they will not be a charge on the public funds through" unemployment or illness for five years. Refugees in increasing numbers have been applying recently to the Continental Catholic Migrants' Welfare Committee, the members of which assist by facilitating transport to various parts of the country, and by putting the refugees in touch with employers.