ALIEN IMMIGRANTS

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XX, Issue 162, 28 June 1930, Page 4

ALIEN IMMIGRANTS

A Brisbane cable yesterday states that the Queensland Government has offered a reward of £2,000 for information leading to the ■ arrest and conviction of the persons guilty of removing the Italian coat-of-arms from the consulate at Innisfail. The substantial amount of the reward indicates that the matter is being treated very seriously and, no doubt, the Italian Consul, with Signor Mussolini at his back extremely jealous for Italian prestige, has been making strong representations on the subject. Beyond this, of course, is the hostility that has arisen between the Australian and Italian workers in the sugarcane area. Australian files to hand indicate that this has reached a violent pitch and is causing trouble difficult to be allayed. There seems no doubt but that the Italians have secured a position of dominance in this industrial sphere, almost to the exclusion of the native - born workers. At the same time, there seems to be something in the contention that the Australians were not very keen on seeking employment in this region until there was a failure of it elsewhere. In any event the outcome is such as to point to the danger that must always arise if any substantial aggregation of foreigners is allowed to establish itself in a particular locality. They thus virtually form an alien “colony” that loi 0 preserves the national traits and practices of the country of its origin, and so are all the more difficult of absorption into the general body of the population. This has been found to be the case, and > course on a much bigger scale, in the United States, where German, Italian and Scandinavian groups have been allowed to congregate, preserving their own languages and custom' and issuing their own newspapers. So far as the Germans were concerned, we know how greatly they were influential in keeping the United States so long from joining up with the Allies in the Great War. Something ihe

same difficulties have arisen in the big South American republics also. The lesson is that, where alien immigrants are admitted in any great numbers, it should be seen that they are pretty well distributed over the country.