§ THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. AKERS-DOUGLAS,) Kent, St. Augustine'sI do not think that I need offer any apology for bringing forward a Bill dealing with the regulations respecting the admission of aliens into this country. What has taken place since last year has more than proved that the provision of regulations with regard to the admission of undesirable aliens is an extremely pressing 465 question, and during that time the problem has certainly become more acute. I am afraid I must trouble the House with one or two statistics, but they will be very few. During the year 1904 as many as 195,000 aliens were returned as having come to this country. Of these, 99,000 odd were described as transmigrants, and 12,000 as sailors. Though the destination of the remaining 82,000 was not definitely known, some of them were known to have gone to America, but the greater proportion probably settled in this country. [Cries of "Oh, oh!"] I do not want, on this occasion, to treat this matter as controversial, but I have read the speeches of hon. Gentlemen opposite in which they have been able to prove to their own satisfaction that a minus quantity remained on these shores. Certainly that is not the information which reaches me through the Government Departments from sources open to all Members of the House. [Renewed cries of "Oh, oh!"] If hon. Members do not desire to have the figures I will not give them, but I can prove perfectly well at a later stage that the number of undesirable aliens coming to this country has increased, and that it has not only increased during the past year, but the statistics of the last three months show a very large increase over the statistics of the three corresponding months in 1904. The evils which these aliens bring in their train—overcrowding, living in insanitary conditions, the lowering of the general standard of life and morality, and crime—have also, unfortunately, increased. There is no doubt about these facts. The criminal statistics show that alien crime has steadily increased in this country, both absolutely and relatively to the total prison population. In 1900 3,130 alien prisoners were received in our prisons, and in 1904 the number was 4,774. I have received complaints not only from recorders, not only from the London stipendiary magistrates, who have very largely to deal with cases of aliens, but also from Judges of the High Courts, as to the large amount of work, and, I think, unnecessary work, cast upon them by the presence of this class of criminal. Last year I am aware certain Members of the Opposition made an offer on the Grand Committee that 466 they would accept that portion of the Bill which dealt with criminal aliens, but that offer was not unanimous. [Cries of "Yes."] It was distinctly said by some that they would oppose the Bill, and even that portion of it.
§ MR. TREVELYAN) (Yorkshire, W.R., EllandIt was not opposed in the House by a single Member.
§ MR. AKERS-DOUGLASI beg the hon. Member's pardon; I have the report here of what took place. I gathered from the speeches of the right hon. Member for East Fife and the right hon. Member for Stirling Burghs, the Leader of the Opposition, that they were prepared to accept a Bill of this sort, providing that it was limited in this respect. I could not accept last year that proposition, neither can I accept it this year, as it would only deal with one aspect of the question. We are determined to deal with this organised traffic in undesirable aliens, and we cannot limit it to an expulsion from this country of those who come within the scope of the Courts of law in this country. If hon. Members will look at the statistical table issued by the Board of Trade, they will see that the great bulk of this traffic comes from eight ports in the country. There are twenty-nine ports from which the returns are taken, but something like 97 per cent, of the aliens came to eight ports, extending from Leith to Southampton. It is this wholesale immigration at these ports which we intend to control, and at these ports our machinery will be set up, and at these ports only immigrant ships will be allowed to land aliens. We do not propose in any way to hamper the bona fide transmigrant; he is especially exempted from the restrictions imposed upon other alien immigrants.
As regards the actual provisions of the Bill, it deals with the landing of undesirable aliens. It provides that no immigrant shall be landed from an immigrant ship except at ports where there is an immigrant officer appointed under the Act, and without the leave of that immigrant officer, given after he has made art inspection in company with a medical inspector. In cases where leave to land has been refused the immigrant or the 467 master of the ship may appeal to a board appointed at each port; and this board is to consist of three persons, of whom one shall be a magistrate, the others having experience of Poor Law and administrative matters. We hope thus to obtain the co-operation of the Jewish Board of Guardians, in order that the interests of that at community—especially in London, where it is very large—may be properly respected. And we provide in this Bill that an immigrant shall be considered undesirable, and, as such, may be refused permission to land in this country if he cannot show that he has, or is in a position to obtain, the means of supporting himself in decent sanitary conditions; if he is a lunatic or an idiot; if, owing to disease or infirmity, he is likely to become a charge upon the rates or otherwise detrimental to the public; if he has been sentenced abroad for an extraditable crime, not being of a political character; or if he has been previously expelled under this Act. The landing of an alien shall not be refused, however, if he proves that he is seeking admission solely to avoid prosecution for an offence of a political character.
The second part of the Bill deals with the expulsion of undesirable aliens already in our midst. To secure this the Secretary of State may make an expulsion order requiring an alien to leave the United Kingdom within a time he fixes, and thereafter to remain out of it; but the Secretary of State can only act on the certificate of a Court of law, including a Court of summary jurisdiction, if he is satisfied that the alien has been convicted for an offence for which he can be imprisoned without the option of a fine, and that the Court recommends the expulsion either in addition to or in lieu of the sentence which he receives. Then, again, the all en may be sent out of the country if a certificate is given to the Secretary of State by a Court of summary jurisdiction within twelve months after the last entrance to this country of the alien, showing that the alien has, within. three months, been in receipt of parochial relief of such a character as would disqualify him for the Parliamentary franchise, which is a condition very well known, or within three months has been 468 wandering without means of subsistence, or has been living under insanitary conditions due to overcrowding, or that he has been convicted of an extradition crime abroad. The Secretary of State, further, has the power to meet the expenses of the deportation of the alien, but such expenses he can recover from the master of the ship who brought the alien if the expulsion order is made on a certificate within six months of his landing. Further, this principle will not only extend to the shipowner or the master of the ship, but to that particular line of ship. Then, the obligations which fall on the master of any ship at the present time to make a return will be continued, but those returns will have to be made in a more exhaustive and accurate manner than now.
This, very shortly, is the Bill I ask leave to introduce. I cannot say, of course, how it will be received by this House, but I trust that the same opposition which was given to the Bill last year may not be extended to it this year. I venture to think that the feeling in favour of some legislation, not only to expel criminal aliens, but to restrict the immigration into this country of undesirable aliens, has very considerably increased since last year. If that is the case, I trust that that feeling will be reflected in this House, and that a desire will be shown to deal comprehensively with this question, and prevent this country being made a receptacle for destitute, diseased, and criminal aliens.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the Law with regard to Aliens."—(Mr. Secretary Akers-Douglas.)
§ SIR CHARLES DILKE (Gloucestershire, Forest of Dean)said the Home Secretary had given the House the statistics, roughly speaking, upon which his case for the Bill was based. The House might, remember that last year he gave the House statistics of a similar character which had to be entirely altered, cut clown to a tenth in consequence of his attention being called to the Report of the Board of Trade.
§ MR. AKERS-DOUGLASI beg the hon. Gentleman's pardon. I gave the 469 whole figures, and I admitted afterwards that I had not taken off figures for sailors. This year they have been taken off.
§ SIR CHARLES DILKENo, Sir, the figures have not been so corrected as to meet the objection of last year. Proceeding, he said he would challenge the Secretary of State to produce to the House before the Second Reading the annual Return, in the same form as produced after the Second Reading of the Bill last year, of Emigration and Immigration. They were never told last year, even in the reduced figures the Home Office appeared to take a different view from the Board of Trade—what the Report was; but it was laid upon the Table and circulated after the debates. It was pointed out that whilst they were told by the Home Office that there was an increasing number of aliens settling in this country, the Board of Trade reported in April, 1904, that the total admissions in 1903 were decidedly less than in 1902. The figures decreased last year so enormously that the suggestion that the right hon. Gentleman had made, that some opponents of the Bill had arrived at a minus quantity, was not made by any Member of the House; it was made by the Board of Trade. If the House would look at the last Return they would find that the figures of the Board of Trade, after the deduction for seamen, reduced the total number settling in this country down to a few hundreds. He saw that the hon. and gallant Member for Stepney laughed, but he was not giving figures on his own authority, but on the authority of the Board of Trade. He was referring to documents circulated to Members as the highest authority on this subject, and as an annual Return corresponding with the Census Returns and which were unanimously adopted by the Royal Commission of which the hon. and gallant Member was a member.
§ MAJOR EVANS GORDON (Tower Hamlets, Stepney)I wish to say at this point that the calculations just mentioned are perfectly familiar to me, and that the deductions the right hon. Baronet draws 470 from them are entirely and utterly erroneous.
§ SIR CHARLES DILKEsaid the deductions were drawn by the Royal Commission. The census figures and the Board of Trade Returns agreed, both were approved by the Royal Commission, and they entirely over-rode the figures given by the Home Secretary. The Home Secretary, after dealing with these figures—and he, the right hon. Baronet, disputed them in toto on the authority of the Returns of the Board of Trade—turned to the offer which was then made to deal with crime. He stated that the offer concerned, as he understood him, only a single point, that they were to limit the Bill to those who came within the scope of the criminal Courts of this country. This was not the offer. There was a double offer as regarded crime, and that offer was distinctly renewed by the Member for East Fife in his speech at Reading. Two offers were made, and the Home Secretary had only alluded to one. He said it was not a unanimous offer; but a Bill was brought into this House by some Members who had actively opposed the Government Bill, and it was only blocked by Members opposite. Then the Home Secretary came to the changes which had been made in the new Bill. The Bill was introduced under the Ten Minutes Rule. It was the principal Bill of the year; it was first in the list named in the King's Speech; and it was entirely different from the Bill of last year, being stronger in some points and weaker in others. It was introduced under the Ten Minutes Rule without the possibility of discussion in the House, whereas the Party opposite insisted upon a two days debate in 1894 on the introduction of the Welsh Church Bill, and two days debate on the same Bill in 1895, although this Bill was quite as novel a departure from the principles of the legislation of the country as the Welsh Church Bill could be said to be after the disestablishment of the Irish Church. The Bill of last year broke down hopelessly on the police evidence before the Royal Commission; it killed the Bill, and the proof of this was that there was no attempt now to be made to interfere with the excursion traffic for French workmen to Folkestone, and 471 Dover, The Home Secretary proposed to confine the operation of the Bill to certain immigrant ports, and to force the immigrant to come into those ports. This was entirely contrary to the character of the Bill of last year. The Home Secretary had been mild in his language today as to what was going to happen in the discussion on the Bill, but the hon. and gallant Member for Stepney had not been so mild, and he would like the House to notice what the hon. and gallant Member for Stepney, the chief friend and supporter of the Bill, had said as to the manner in which the Bill was to be passed through the House. He said on Wednesday night last that he had it from the Prime Minister that the Bill would be introduced to-day, that there would be no reference to Grand Committee this year; the Prime Minister would put into operation the closure and all the weapons the Government possessed. He was quoting from the Morning Post.
§ MAJOR EVANS GORDONI cannot admit the accuracy of that report.
§ SIR CHARLES DILKEI am glad, because it would have been in the nature of a threat to the House.
§ MAJOR EVANS GORDONI prefaced that remark by saying that I hoped that all the machinery at the disposal of the Government would be used to pass the Bill. I adhere to that hope. I did not commit the Prime Minister at all.
§ SIR CHARLES DILKEsaid he was glad the report was contradict d, because in the Bill of last year all the important parts came last, and, if there were to be any attempt to closure such a Bill, it might easily occur that principles wholly new to English law and impossible in working operation would be passed through the House without any discussion, and that would be a monstrous wrong. The Home Secretary had to-day avoided altogether one of the mistakes into which the Government fell last year. Last year there was an absolute violation of the recent principles of our law by the quarantine proposals of the Bill. He 472 had said nothing with regard to the admission of sick and diseased people this year. Last year the Bill was entirely opposed to the Act of 1896 and to the-Orders of the Local Government Board, and he assumed the quarantine portion of the Bill had now been dropped, and that all the proposals likely to interfere with the cross-Channel traffic had been withdrawn. The Home Secretary made no reply, but it was a matter on which they ought to have early information. As far as he could see, it would be necessary for them to oppose the Bill, to take again the course they took last year in dividing against it on the Second Reading; and he proposed, if no one else did so, to oppose the Second Reading upon two grounds. On the ground that the Bill would interfere with the principle of asylum in this country without any proved necessity for taking any such step. The-right of asylum was never more needed than it was at the present time, in the-state of affairs in East Europe known to every man in the House. There was, in 1903, the last year for which they had the Board of Trade Return, no increase of alien population in this country, and the alien population was trifling as compared with the alien population of every other country in the world. At this moment France had just extended to the Italian workmen, who were more numerous by far in France than all workmen of all foreign countries were in England, the whole £ the old-age pensions provisions, the whole of the insurance provisions of their law, and this by treaty. It would be a retrograde step, unworthy of this country, to adopt these means of restriction and exclusion in face of an evil, which, except in a district here and there, was trifling. And if they took this view with regard to. victims of persecution, and with regard to the right of asylum here, they took it with regard to the other portions of the offer made by them with regard to sweating in certain trades. The view of those trades was that the evils complained of should be dealt with by anti-sweating legislation; and it was by this means they would seek to combat the evil against which this Bill professed to be directed.
§ Question put, and agreed to.
473§ Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Secretary Akers-Douglas, Mr. A. J. Balfour, Mr. Attorney-General, Mr. Cochrane, and Mr. Bonar Law.