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before being distributed for western points. Professor Smith thinks such passengers should remain on board the ship to its final port and be examined with more thoroughness while the cargo is being unloaded. By this method the unfit would never be permitted to land. There is undoubtedly need everywhere for greater vigilance in the matter of examination. It is a poor economy that permits the sailing of the unfit in the first place.

TRANSPORTATION COMPANIES MUST HOUSE

DETAINED PASSENGERS

The transportation companies are required by an order in council to provide suitable buildings for the examination and detention of passengers for any purpose under the Immigration Act at every port of entry and border station at which they are permitted by the Minister of Immigration and Colonization to carry on business. The penalty for violation of this regulation shall not exceed one thousand dollars. In cases where there are many arrivals, the accommodation is wholly inadequate and it is at all times much restricted. Canada herself has no great immigrant receiving station like Ellis Island at the port of New York where examination and necessary care are combined. There are many advantages in having a place of this kind, since laws are futile without proper means for their enforcement; and suitable buildings may well be classed among proper means.

ACT OF 1919 IMPROVEMENT OVER EARLIER LAWS

As the law now stands, it is an improvement over all previous legislation, and enables Canada to select the immigrants she desires. A heterogeneous and undigested mass is not an advantage to any country and least of all to a nation that is anxious to develop her agricultural resources. Settlers in any true sense must be assimilable, and those who take advantage of homestead opportunities must be capable

A Study in Canadian Immigration, page 365.

of becoming citizens. Citizenship in Canada is not difficult to obtain; the time required is three years, and the privilege is extended to all aliens including Asiatics. At the time of the outbreak of the World War, it was found that only about forty per cent. of the aliens had become naturalized. The rate among Asiatics was only fourteen per cent. which shows that these people do not appear to value the privilege highly.

In times of political upheaval, nations take stock of themselves as they do not in ordinary times, and during the last few years the immigrant-receiving countries learned much about their own population problems. They learned that statutes alone cannot turn aliens into patriots. There must be a welcoming spirit in the nation as well as an entrance certificate in the hands of the arriving immigrant. Then will all the people enter into the full enjoyment of whatever in the way of prosperity the country has to offer.

CHAPTER VII

IMMIGRATION AND PROTECTIVE
LEGISLATION IN AUSTRALASIA

AUSTRALASIAN IDEALS

WHEN We come to a discussion of immigration in Australia and New Zealand, we find an entirely different situation from that in the countries we have already surveyed. In the United States, and in Canada, too, to a lesser degree, we have a long history of immigration with abuses crying for correction. The newer lands, on the other hand, have been shrewd enough to foresee dangers, and make provision to avoid them. They have definite ideas as to their desires for the future, and they intend to carry them out. How much geography and inherent national traits have to do with this attitude is difficult to say, nor does speculation on these points enter into our study here. The facts are observable and must be recorded. Australia and New Zealand are determined to remain dominantly British and to preserve the institutions of the white man. Upon this point they insist vociferously. They are unwilling to yield to a filtration of other racial stock and other ideals. Those developed to their present state by Anglo-Saxon culture are so satisfactory to the Australasian that the idea of change is unbearable to him. Others may experiment with new family forms and social customs, but for him the present forms will do.

Evidence of this attitude is found in a speech in the Federal Parliament on the Peace Treaty by Mr. W. M. Hughes, Prime Minister of Australia. He said: "Members who have traveled in the East and in Europe will be able to understand with what difficulty this world-gathering of men, representing both colored and partly colored peoples, was able

'Quoted by Thwing, Human Australasia, pages 14–15.

to appreciate this idea of 5,000,000 people who had dared to say over a great continent that this was not only theirs, but none should enter in except such as they choose. Therefore, perhaps, the greatest thing which we have achieved in such circumstances, in such an assembly, was the principle of a 'White Australia.' . . . This is the foundation of all that Australia has fought for. This is the only part of the Empire or of the world in which there is so little admixture of races. In England and France, you may hear men in adjoining counties or provinces speak different dialects, and, in the case of France, unable to understand each other; but in no part of Australia can you distinguish one Australian from another by his speech. We are more British than Britain, and we hold firmly to this great principle of a 'White Australia' because we know what we know, and because we have liberty and we believe in our race and in ourselves, and in our capacity to achieve our great destiny."

The spirit voiced here is not always approved throughout the Empire, but it is the spirit that drove the " Anzacs " 2 into the World War where they made a name for themselves by bravery almost super-human, as evidenced in the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign.

AN ENGLISH EDITOR'S CRITICISM

Lord Northcliffe had little patience with Australasia's pretensions, nor would his type be expected to have. He wrote:

"I know that both Australia and New Zealand are naturally anxious that the immigrant should not be greeted by the spectre of unemployment waiting to welcome him at the wharf gates. They are emphatic that the city laborer and the 'black-coated' worker are not wanted for the voyage.

"It is not something in the city' but 'something on the land' that is going to succeed in the two Dominions. Yet to both of them I would say 'Do not be too fastidious in your Used in official records to mean Australian and New Zealand Army Corps.

demands; do not keep your lands empty because every immigrant has not got capital or the diploma of an agricultural college in his pocket.' After all in the brave old days of the pioneers there were no nominated jobs to go to, yet somehow the settlers succeeded. If the waster went to the wall, the good man won through. Everyone must find his level in the building of a young nation, and the man who has the courage to seek a new world has probably the energy to make good in it once he gets there. And above all, Australians must greet them warmly as the Canadians do, and drop that contemptuous and foolish word, 'Pommy' which they apply to the immigrants . . . .” 8

Lord Northcliffe was not alone in objecting to the Australasian attitude toward outsiders. During the war, while speaking of the soldiers of the Empire, a young Canadian said to me, "The Canadian boys look down on the Australians saying they are inferior despite their great pretensions to being a superior race of Britishers." Then she added with an air of finality," Of course they are inferior to us!" And of such is the Empire of Britain.

REMOTENESS A FACTOR IN DETERMINING
CHARACTER OF POPULATION

To understand the immigration situation in the countries under discussion, it is necessary first of all to know something of their settlement and their basic needs. With the exception of the aborigines, they are both originally entirely British, and on account of their remoteness from crowded sections of Europe and the consequent great cost of reaching them, they have remained so. The kind of competition which, at times, has rendered steerage passage from Europe to America very low, has never been operative among lines going to the southern Pacific. This frees the Australasian countries from the problem of dealing with immigrants from the lowest economic

'Letter by Viscount Northcliffe in The London Times, weekly edition, May, 1922.

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