CHILD MIGRATION

Evening Star, Issue 25400, 3 February 1945, Page 11

CHILD MIGRATION

MORE HOMES THAN ORPHANS TO FILL THEM N.Z. WON'T HAVE LARGE INFLUX (Special) WELLINGTON, Feb. 2. The Government has been informed that there are more homes applying to adopt United Kingdom orphans than there are orphans to fill them, and there is in fact no possibility of any large-scale migration from the United Kingdom. Making this statement to-day, tha Prime Minister, Mr Fraser, added that the latest information was from Franco and Belgium, in the ease of which countries it had been discovered after their liberation that surprisingly large numbers of children, including Jewish children, thought to be orphans had now found one or both parents living. Even in the case of Polish children, of whom there were some thousands in Iran and India, and. for whom homes were being offered by other countries under conditions similar to those made in New Zealand, .Mr Jordan was informed that there was no indication that their ipermanent migration abroad would be desired. On the contrary, it is intended by the Polish authorities that all such children should return to Poland to help repair the terrible losses that country has sustained during the trials it has undergone since 1939. Summing up, said Mr Fraser, the opinion of the New Zealand High Commissioner was that evidence in recent months tended to destroy the notion that at present there were many orphans available for emigration and that it seemed doubtful, moreover, whether the future number would be large.