ALIEN IMMIGRATION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19388, 24 July 1926, Page 10

ALIEN IMMIGRATION.

One good result came from the White New Zealand League deputation which met the Minister of Cus toms yesterday. It gave him the opportunity of stating a few facts in answer to some of the extravagant statements which have been spread broadcast round the country lately. The ideal of maintaining racial purity in New Zealand is one to which every right-thinking citizen will subscribe. This country is, as the Minister said, exceptionally fortunate in its comparative freedom from those racial problems which vex many other parts of the Empire. Up to a point it is an excellent thing to find public opinion alert and determined to uphold this very desirable state of affairs. Such a policy, however, needs to be advocated with a discretion such as has not always been displayed - by the enthusiasts for rigid undiscriminating exclusion. It has to be remembered that those at whom the propaganda is aimed are not deaf, blind, nor without feeling. As the situation stands New Zealand has an admirable, law for the control cf unwanted migration. No country in the world has a better. The Dominion has gone as far as it is possible to go without stirring up universal ill-feeling. Much depends, of course, on the way the lawis administered. Mr, Downie Stewart showed from official figures that 58 Chinese came in last year,

irrespective of the number that left. This year permits have been suspended altogether. No Government could go further than that. It is, in fact, remarkable that so much has been achieved smoothly and without protest. Two conclusions can be drawn from what Mr. Downie Stewart proved. First, that the alarmist statements about the influx of hordes of race aliens have involved great exaggeration, and, second, that no further legislation is needed to control the entry of race aliens. Thus far the result is satisfactory, even if it leaves untouched a very different problem, that of meeting the social conditions threatening as the result of -the voluntary segregation of those aliens already in the country.