DISTRIBUTION OF PEOPLE

Taranaki Daily News, 10 September 1934, Page 7

DISTRIBUTION OF PEOPLE

MIGRATION FROM ENGLAND CANNOT PROMOTE RECOVERY. SPECIAL COMMITTEE'S REPORT. FORMER POSITION WILL RECUR. British Wireless. Rugby, Sept. 7. The Inter-Departmental Committee on Migration Policy, under the chairmanship of Mr. Malcolm MacDonald, Undersecretary for the Dominions, expresses confidence in a report now published that the conditions led to former migrations from United Kingdom to Canada, Australia and New Zealand will recur, although perhaps in an altered form, and that the volume of immigration may be as great as in the past. _ The report continues: “The idea that migration can of itself promote economic recovery is a fallacy. On the contrary, migration is one of the products of recovery and the best method of promoting it is to bring about conditions, by such means as raising the level of interImperial trade, which would attract migration.” Under existing conditions, the committee states, the encouragement of any considerable scheme of migration is out of the question. The United Kingdom Government should only assist migration when conditions are favourable to a satisfactory settlement and when the overseas Governments are prepared to receive migrants and join in the arrangements necessary to give them a real prospect of success. It is recognised that the spontaneous movement of people will in due course revive and that in the meantime no organised transfer of population will be of much use.