THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1906. IMMIGRATION RESTRICTION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume 1327, Issue 1327, 3 September 1906, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1906. IMMIGRATION RESTRICTION.

The Immigration Restriction Act Amendment Bill which has been read a second time by the large majority of 47 votes to 7, although opposed by the Minister for Justice, is one which ought to be drastically modified in committee. As it stands it provides that no person shall be admitted to the colony earlier than three years after being released from imprisonment for an offence which in this colony would be punishable by more than a year's imprisonment, political offenders and those who have received free'pardons alone excepted. This sounds very plausible. We may be satisfied that members generally voted for it with the best of intentions and with the idea that this colony should not be made the dumping ground for the released criminals of other countries and colonies. But in doing so they have, nevertheless, taken a stage towards the perpetration of grave injustice and towards the establishment of a harsh law which may in the end react upon ourselves. If the effect of the Bill would be the exclusion of the habitual criminal and of the habitual ' criminal —British, American, French, or other—there could be no reasonable objection raised, any more than there can be any reasonable objection raised to the admission into any country of persons who will immediately become a permanent charge upon charitable aid. For criminals who are regarded as unfit to be at large in their own community cannot claim any right to be admitted into ah-' other; we might even go further and agree that if three convictions make a man a habitual criminal in his own country, two successive convictions may well make him an undesirable immigrant in another. But Mr. Sidey's Bill denies to any released prisoner the right to go to another country and to begin there a life of industry and honour, removed from the associations that surrounded his fall. For if this sort of law is good for us it is good for other States. It is true that it exists in the world already, but it is not general, nor should New Zealand help to make it general. For the more severe we are with the habitual criminal the more ruthlessly we stamp out professional crime from civilisation, the more generous we can afford to be to the man who has erred and would lead a new life, the more closely we 1 can practice upon the repentant the maxims of Christianity. And there are certain offences, among them those to which young men with small means and large opportunities and many temptations are peculiarly liable, which are not commonly re- , peatcd if the offender is given " an-

other chance ;" and the best chance in such < cases is undoubtedly to be found in a new country, as every sensible man knows: It is needlessly cruel to close this door to a man who has erred and would reform. It is bad policy because in the end we close. the same door against our own released prisoners and do it without any adequate gain. The habitual criminal, we repeat, is another matter, and if the Bill were amended to cover him and nobody else it would effect all that can be reasonably asked and would avoid the institution of a moral wrong. While on the subject of Immigration [Restriction it may be pointed out that the colony is getting into the habit of treating a very grave and serious question with, a casualness that may lead it into very serious difficulties. Even in the matter of Asiatic Immigration, on which there is practically no disagreement amongst us, we are illogical enough to deny the Imperial right to interfere with our legislation while we rely upon the Imperial arm to enforce it for us. If we really mean to keep Asiatics out of the colony, whatever happens, we ought to be intelligent enough to see that the few thousand men which are all we can ourselves muster at the present time could not possibly of themselves enforce the p®-tax. Yet we not only exclude the' Asiatic, but we strain to the utmost the tacit understanding with the Mother Country, under which the local government of this colony is left in the h&nds of those British people who happen to be here, by excluding in the most haphazard way our fellowcitizens of the British Empire. As far as the law goes, we can prevent an Englishman, theoretically a fellow inheritor with ourselves of the Imperial Domain of which New Zealand is part, from landing in the colony if he has nothing but . physical strength and an unblemished character. He must have golden sovereigns in his pockets to legally claim entry to this British land. It is proposed now that the Englishmen shall not come here to reform, and we have already decided that he shall not come here to recover his health. In a little while we may hear that he ought not to be admitted after 45, as after then he cannot earn his Old Age Pension. Nor would it be surprising to hear a dozen other propositions all having as their aim the extension of Immigration Restriction. It is a serious matter to exclude even foreigners who have no right to cross our borders excepting under such conditions as may be imposed upon them with the Imperial sanction and support. But it is a much more serious matter, frankly considered, to exclude our own fel-low-countrymen, who are as British as ourselves, and who have right of entry which can only be righteously challenged upon the ground of public necessity. In the case of Mr. Sidey's Bill, while it is clearly a matter of public necessity to exclude the habitual criminal, the Minister for Justice, although in the minority, was as clearly justified in denying the public necessity of excluding the man who is not a habitual offender. " Persecution" was not too large a word to use for this hunting down of a man who has paid the penalty of his offending, and may reasonably be thought to come to another country to live an honest, industrious, and God-fearing life.