ALIEN IMMIGRATION.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR."]
S111,—I have read with great interest the able article on Lord Salisbury's Aliens Bill, in the Spectator of July 14th, and as one who has been working at this subject for the last seven years, should be glad if you would allow me to call attention to one point which, in my opinion, has not been sufficiently emphasised, and that is the indirect influence which the unlimited pouring-in of destitute and degraded foreigners has in increasing our national burden of pauperism and vice. It is often objected that but few of these foreign immigrants come upon the rates, and that our workhouses show but few signs of their presence. This is a half-truth, and like all half-troths it conceals a fallacy. Nana falsa doctrina eat quae non permieceat aliquid veritatia. On the surface the objection is plausible enough. The numerous Jewish and foreign benevolent societies are careful not to allow their people to come on the rates if they can possibly help it. But that the whole tendency of their destitute, or semi-destitute, immigration is to drive the native poor upon the rates, cannot be denied. In the congested trades and districts which these undesirable foreigners affect, their presence is sufficient to beat down wages to a level below that upon which the native worker can with decency exist ; and with the degradation of labour comes also a degradation of morals.
In proof of this, I may quote a comparatively recent report of the Mile End Board of Guardians, to the effect that this destitute foreign immigration has "a deteriorating effect upon the moral, financial, and social condition of the people." The Whitechapel Guardians also deplore the substitution of the foreign for the English population. The result, they say, is the lowering of the general condition of the people. The Hackney Board of Guardians also consider it a serious social danger, reducing wages to a "starvation point."
Such a consensus of opinion cannot be ignored. It is in this way—indirectly rather than directly, but none the less actually—that the immigration of destitute aliens tends to increase pauperism, vice, and crime, and constitutes a serious
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