EMIGRE POLES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26176, 12 June 1946, Page 6

EMIGRE POLES

GOVERNMENT ACTION ATTACKED PART OF MAJOR SCHEME (P.A.) ROTORUA, June 11. Asking for a declaration of Government policy concerning immigration, an article in to-day’s Morning Post says that from an obviously tendentious report in a contemporary the public has been informed for the first time and unofficially of a scheme to insinuate 835 children of Polish ancestry into the community. Furthermore, “it is believed that recently about 90 temporary visas were issued by the New Zealand Government to bring parents into the country to be reunited with their children, whom they have not seen for five or six years." Originally, according to the same account, it was intended that the children should live in New Zealand until the time was ripe for them to return and assist in the reconstruction of Poland. Now, however, they are to have 10 teachers of English and related subjects to fit them for eventual New Zealand citizenship. Already some of the older children are undergoing trade training in Wellington, Palmerston North and other towns, and in some instances boys have been provided with tools of trade by the Child Welfare Department. “All this might meet with some acceptance,” says the Morning Post, “ if the plan did not carry the imprimatur of a major scheme to plant thousands of emigre Poles on British territory to the evident disadvantage of the people of our own race or of other nationals who would be assured of a welcome under the Union Jack. History would lead one genuinely to doubt whether Polish minorities on foreign soil will ever become assimilable. Their experience of life abroad would make them more useful as citizens and leaders against the activities threatening the old culture that was preserved by the Poles during centuries of foreign domination. Indeed,” the article concludes, “ this is surely the ideal and purpose of all Polish patriots.”