EXCLUSION OF INDIANS

Otago Witness, Issue 3488, 18 January 1921, Page 45

EXCLUSION OF INDIANS

LETTER TO PRIME MINISTER. In connection with the new Immigration Restriction Act the following letter has been forwarded to the Prime Minister (the Hon. W. F. Massey) by the Auckland Indian Association:—• “We have all this time felt, it as a grievance that the expression “ British subject ” has been so defined in the new Immigration Restriction Act as to exclude us Indians, with the avowed object of differentiating between us and those from Great Britain wanting to settle in New Zealand to satisfy the popular demand to keep Asiatics out. But we would not dwell on this topic further, as the law is now an accomplished fact, and it is beyond our power to upset it here. “ However, it was at least honed that some consideration would be shown to those who had left their homes in India, under or expecting the old arrangements. According to newspaper reports and private correspondence, it appears that there are, roughly speaking, about 150 Indians in Suva (Fiji) with passports for New Zealand issued by the Government of India awaiting passages in New Zealand. We are pained to find that those who had practically spent the saving of a lifetime (their own or of their family) are stranded now in Fiji, because the Union Steam Ship Company demands now a deposit of £l5O per capita for five years, instead of the £IOO pending

landing in New Zealand, as before. This arrangement, by whomsoever instigated, is simply prohibitive, and places those countrymen of ours in Fiji in the most calamitous condition. “ Our association, therefore, earnestly hopes that the New Zealand Government will take the serious situation created as indicated above into sympathetic consideration, and indicate to the Union Steam Ship Company that there is no necessity for collecting practically a refundable poll tax from those unfortunate people who had left their homes in India many months before the new arrangements were given publicity to.”