The Nelson Evening Mail FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1942 CHILD MIGRANTS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 77, 27 November 1942, Page 4

The Nelson Evening Mail FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1942 CHILD MIGRANTS

MR A. LEIGH HUNT, chairman of the Dominion Settlement Association, Wellington, has for so long been a close student of population problems and a battler for planned migration schemes that his views on this crucially important subject merit serious consideration. That,! unfortunately, they have not received 1 to any great extent in official quarters and New Zealand is the poorer j for it. We will be poorer still unless we take our courage in both! hands as soon as the war is over and i act to stem a trend which, if not j arrested, will prove a deadlier enemy : in the long run than Hitler or Tojo. j Those responsible for rehabilitation j plans should already be trying to! visualise how we can attract new and useful settlers to build up this Do-1 minion. Yet, apart from a few far- i seeing public men like Mr Hunt, a; threat of population decline in a country only a century old does not seem to alarm the people. Do we not remember how wishful thinking led us to believe that this 1 war would never come? That is a common attitude towards the unen-j viable prospect of race decline. Those who think about it at all too often assume that New Zealand’s population will continue to grow na-1 turally till it reaches the optimum level without the need for immigrants. What trends do the figures disclose? Speaking to a representative group of Wellington citizens this week Mr Hunt said that, at the present rate, our population would have declined in 60 years to what it was in 1860. He also said that, in the years 1929-38, the number of people leaving New Zealand had exceeded im-

migrants by 2128. There are two disquieting facts. The handwriting! was on the wall before the war be- ! gan but the Government has remain- { ed virtually silent on the greatest of all this young country’s problems— j next to the winning of the war—j when it must know as well as Mr ! Hunt knows that “inadequate popu-. lation is the cause of 95 per cent, of the country’s difficulties with de- i fence, excessive taxation and lack of labour.” Official silence is, unfor- • tunately, mainly attributable to political considerations. The union movement as a whole looks unfavourably upon immigrants. It still labours under the delusion—or acts as though it does—that there is a fixed amount of work and that, if more workers are brought in from outside, they will become competitors for the workers’ own jobs. Although this fallacy has been exploded many times it remains the root cause Of union antagonism to immigration, a state of affairs which has made it difficult for the present Government to include an immigration plank in its platform for building New Zealand.

Mr Hunt's latest plan may be found more acceptable because it does something to get round this political 1 obstacle. He would like to see New Zealand proclaimed as “the haven for . the orphans of Europe.” The plan would be to take 1,000,000 children from war-torn Britain and Europe

at the rate of 100,000 a year. He believes that many of them would be accepted into Dominion homes without much State expenditure being involved. The others could be cared for in military camps (presumably when no longer required for their present purpose) and in farm schools of the Fairbridge type, one of which could be established in each province. As an economic incentive to take these children, and for larger natural families, he suggests that the income tax deduction be increased to £2OO for each child up to 16 years of age. In some parts of his scheme Mr Hunt displays perhaps undue optimism. He may have been led to believe that, * because New Zealand homes took in evacuees so readily in the emergency of war, they might be disposed to favour large-scale adoption. But if we could get a million healthy and suitable children at a cost of several millions of pounds it would be one of the best investments this country has ever made because it would be an investment in human beings. Under modern conditions children undoubtedly make the best migrants. They come to a new environment at the pliant stage when their habits are still being formed, and, as they grow up with their adopted country, they become part of it. That removes many of the difficulties that arise with adult immigrants. They would not be competitors for jobs with the present generation of workers. More time would be provided to fit them into their new surroundings and to give

! them that training which would I make them useful citizens. By the time they entered the industrial field they would do so as New Zealanders on terms of equality with our nativeborn adolescents. The machinery details of Mr Hunt’s plan need further study but its kernel is eminently sound. Some may argue that the children would not be forthcoming but it would be a grand thing to make the offer as soon as circumstances were suitable and the response would probably surprise the doubters. Here is a constructive suggestion worthy of the most mature consideration by the Government who should lose no time in investigating how far it can be built into our master plan of post-war reconstruction and expansion.