THE H.B. TRIBUNE WEDNESDAY, APRIL 8, 1936 INTRA-IMPERIAL MIGRATION

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXVI, Issue 100, 8 April 1936, Page 4

THE H.B. TRIBUNE WEDNESDAY, APRIL 8, 1936 INTRA-IMPERIAL MIGRATION

Sooner or later the question of reviving immigration to our shores from the Old Country will have to be given serious consideration. What with our continuously decreasing birth-rate, the prospect of adequately populating the country becomes more and more hopeless unless some such measure is adopted. It is not, of course, to be expected that our new Government, with so many irons in the fire already, will be able to give the problem any very early attention. We may, however, in the meantime have a look at what is being done on the other side of the world to facilitate the movement once it is undertaken. Some few weeks ago we heard by cable of the institution by the British Government of an Oversea Settlement Board. The functions of this Board are discussed in an issue of the London “Times” received by this week’s mail. As a preliminary it is said that as a result of the great dispersion of material comforts and pleasures among the masses at Home there is a slackened incentive to seek a new life overseas. On the side of the Dominions there arcmore cautious estimates of capacity for absorbing population, especially under existing economic conditions. Unhappy experience has also provided a warning against embarking on over-ambi-tious projects.

With this preface, we are told that the Board will have the definite duty of examining, with a view to official action, al! schemes of emigration which seek to utilise the good offices or the financial resources of the State. The membership of the first Board is discussed with approval, consisting as it does of the Dominions Under-Secretary, a representative each of the Dominions Office and of the Treasury and five unofficial members, all of whom have already displayed great interest in the subject of Imperial migration. With all this, however, it is said that there should be no exaggerated hopes of any early and spectacular occasion for the exercise of the Board’s functions. It is regarded as clear that the resumption of adult emigration must be a process guarded and even tentative. There is no hope of attaining anything like the figures that held prior to the economic crisis, though it may be expected that with the improved outlook in the Dominions there will be some resumption of an outflow among those who can finance their own movements. This, however, is not the procedure contemplated by some who have been pressing for the renewal of emigration as a matter of State policy. They have in mind

specific schemes for the transference of population in mass, to be financed wholly or in part by Governments. All such ideas raise a host of complex questions and one purpose of the Oversea Settlement Board is to enquire into them when presented in definite shape.

It will be of interest to out producers t’o note that considerable stress is laid upon what is called the indirect method of inducing migration to the Dominions. This consists In a Government policy directed towards assisting in every way possible to hasten and stabilise improvement in the economic conditions of the Dominions. Chief means towards this end lies in the provision of remunerative markets for their exportable produce. This is expected, firstly, to encourage those with moderate capital who are looking for a profitable down-sit-ting in a new country and, at the same time, to enable Dominion Governments to entertain the idea of renewed schemes of assisted immigration. Every advantage, too, is io be taken of the private “voluntary’" organisations that are in existence. Some of these have met with considerable success in carrying out their emigration plans, more particularly with children and youths, possibly the best type of immigrant as being more readily adaptable to new surroundings end ways of living than arc the adults. The reasons which conn polled the Dominions to suspend Immigration schemes six or seven years ago would seem to be thoroughly understood and appreciated, and Dominion Governments are no doubt alive to the fact that it is expected that they will take the initiative in the way of submitting new proposals to the Home Government, as soon as they are ready for them. Already, so we are told, there has been some approach from the Australian Governments, where the need for increased population is even more urgent than in New Zealand.