§ MR. HARWOOD (Bolton)To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether it is intended that the Aliens Act shall be so far retrospective that under it a man may be ordered to be deported, as happened in a case tried in Manchester last December, who came to this country when fourteen years of age; who has been here continuously for seventeen years; who has married a British-born wife, and has three English-speaking children; and who cannot speak the language of the country to which he is condemned to be deported.
§ (Answered by Mr. Secretary Gladstone.) The liability of an alien criminal to expulsion from the United Kingdom depends, not on the length or shortness of his residence here, but on his being convicted of an offence for which the Court which convicts him has power to impose imprisonment without the option of a fine. It can scarcely be argued that the offence is made less serious by the fact that the alien has long enjoyed the 193 hospitality of this country. If the case to which the hon. Member refers is that of one Simon Bernstein, who was convicted at Manchester, on the 5th December last, of receiving stolen property, sentenced to nine months imprisonment and recommended for expulsion, I may point out that, according to information supplied to me in the prisoner's behalf, the wife is not British born, though she is stated to have been in England ever since infancy, and, so far as I have been able to ascertain, there is no reason to suppose the man would have any difficulty in making himself understood in the country from which he came.