Foreigners For Dominions

Northern Advocate, 21 July 1938, Page 7

Foreigners For Dominions

(Received 2.30 p.m.) RUGBY, July 20. The suggestion that a board of overseas immigration should be established on the lines of the Electricity Board, or the London Transport Board, was made by Viscount Elibank in the House of Lords. He argued that many members of the Overseas Settlement Board were engaged in other directions, and were unable to give the same attention as a full-time board. He recalled that when he was in Hew Zealand, he ventured to propose foreign immigration, and this caused considerable discussion in New Zealand and Australian papers. “I find that the suggestion is not now turned down in the same way as then,” he added. British people could not claim to have no mixed blood, and if the Dominions were able to introduce good foreign immigrants, they might help economic development as long as the British race still predominated. • Lord Stonehaven, a former Gover-nor-General of Australia, said that the , only migrants that would be any good Ito the Dominion are those who go intending to throw in their lot and become citizens of the country. The Duke of Devonshire,, formerly Marquess of Hartington, Dominions Under-Secretary, said it was vital that the Empire should be populated, if not from our own stock by those who can easily be assimilated and hold the same ideals. “Unless we can make the Empire self-supporting in defence within a reasonable time, someone else will populate it for us,” he added, saying that Viscount Elibank’s suggestion of a whole-time board would be considered, but he thought it was unlikely that Parliament would surrender its present power of the Overseas Settlement Board.