UNWANTED BUT CAN’T GET AWAY

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 46, 17 May 1927, Page 3

UNWANTED BUT CAN’T GET AWAY

JUGOSLAV WHO IS PROHIBITED BUT MUST STAY

Like Kipling’s Tomlinson, Nicola Katrani, the Yugoslav who wept bitterly when Mr. F. K. Hunt, S.M., sent him hack to Mount Eden for four months yesterday, after only a fortnight’s freedom, is a homeless soul.

His case is a curious anomaly. New Zealand obviously does not want him, for, as well as putting the country to quite a lot of unnecessary trouble and expense, he is a prohibited immigrant. On the other hand, Katrani himself is no more anxious to stay than we are to have him here. He has made two unsuccessful attempts to shake its dust from his feet, but each time he has been caught and brought back by the collar, as it were, incidentally earning for himself an aggregate of five months’ gaol. Unwanted either in Heaven —or elsewhere—Tomlinson -was sent back to “his house in Berkeley Square.” A similar course seems to be the only feasible one in Katrani’s case. Before sending him to gaol yesterday on charges of being idle and disorderly and trying to stow away in the Marama for Sydney, the magistrate deliberated what else might be done with him. He might be welcomed in South America, it was suggested, but the law has no power to send him there. New South Wales would in all probability close its doors to him if he were allowed to go to Sydney. CpST OF PROCRASTINATION Yugoslavia still claims him as a subject, and back to Yugoslavia he should be sent, since other countries seem to prefer his room to his company. The Dominion has already kept Katrani, who has succeeded in travelling more than half-way round the world as a stowaway, for a month free of charge, and until next September he will also be boarded at the State’s expense. At the end of those four months the Government will still he faced with the problem of what to do with him. Why not face it now and save this unnecessary expense? The cost of deporting Katrani may still have to be faced. The steerage fare from Auckland to Naples is £39, and an additional £2 10s ivould see him in one or other of the Adriatic ports. Of course, there is always the risk of him escaping at some port on the way, should he not feel inclined to revisit his native land, but this should not perturb anybody very much. The main thing is to get rid of him. And while he remains at Mt. Eden, fed, dressed and sheltered by a country that does not want him, his cost to the Dominion is slowly mounting up, and by the time he is released next September, the bill for his upkeep will not fall very far short of the price of his fare to Trieste—£4l 10s. It was suggested to a SUN man by a fellow-countryman of Katrani’s yesterday, that the Yugoslav Government, presumably under an international agreement, would have to reimburse New Zealand for the cost of -sending him home. If this is so, at Katrani were deported now, the Dominion would be able to rejoice at getting rid of him for next to nothing.