HOW EMIGRANTS ARE NOMINATED.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VI, Issue 913, 6 October 1879, Page 2

HOW EMIGRANTS ARE NOMINATED.

The following is an extract from a letter received by this mail from Mr G. M. Reed, Imigration Agent m Ireland : — " You can have no idea of the extent to which the system of nomination m New Zealand is prostituted. - Yon are aware that for various, and I believe good reasons, all the agents throughont Ireland some thirty or forty m all,- Were suppressed, with the exception of two still remaining, but to suppose that this suppression has removed them for active interference with immigration is a huge mistake. Besides taking fees from immigrants ostensibly for filling up their papers, but really for promises to obtain free passages for them, they have developed a new form of industry, to wit, obtaining nomination m New Zealand. I have m my possession a written confession of one of these ex -agents, that he received £5 for'obtaining nomination by a friend m New Zealand for a would be immigrant, who is now crying for his money. The ex-agent will probably suffer for his candour when he gets out of gaol, where he is doing nine months for a similar sin against a sister colony. But this is only a single illustration. I have intimation of similar practices from scores of applicants, and on telling a (person that people of such and such a calling cannot obtain free passages, I have been saucily told : "Oh Mr so and so offers to get us nominated m New Zealand for' a couple of pounds." My conviction is that a very large proportion of the nominations m New Zealand are dishonest, and the direct work of dismissed sub-agents, who use their knowledge of the ropes m putting emigrants up to all sorts of dodges.