CHILD MIGRANTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 137, 7 December 1944, Page 8

CHILD MIGRANTS

AUSTRALIAN SCHEME

TO START AFTER WAR

(By Tolegraph—Press Association—Copyright.) Rec. 1 p.m. CANBERRA, Dec 7. Ihe Commonwealth Government has decided to bring an average of 17,000 child migrants per year to Australia from Great Britain and European countries after the war.

Announcing this, the Acting Prime Minister (Mr. Forde) said the ages within which the scheme would operate would be from six to twelve years for alien children and six to fourteen years for British children. A mission headed by "a person of notable public standing and experience" would be sent abroad to work on the scheme*1 in Britain and Europe. Medical and welfare and migration experts would be included in the mission, which would be set up after consultations between the Commonwealth and State Governments. Machinery would be established to arrange with international bodies such as UNRRA and the various European Governments to select suitable orphans and other children for migration. Within Australia defence establishments likely to be available and suitable for adaption to the scheme would be surveyed. SCHEME WELCOMED. Welcoming the child migration, scheme, the president of the British Orphans Adoption Society, Mr. E. D. Darby, said that 500 members of his society had been waiting for four years to adopt English war orphans. The former Victorian Agent-General in London, Sir Louis Bussau, said that hundreds of thousands of British people were anxious to come to Australia. Most inquiries came from I young men and women of all trades and professions, including tenant farm- i ers and 1 land workers. There were' also large numbers of Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, Dutch, and Poles who I would come to Australia. The Poles would make particularly good migrants. ■