IMPORTED CHINESE WIVES.

IMPORTED CHINESE WIVES. THE QUESTION OF THE POLL TAX.

Recently a Chinese resident of Auckland, desirous of marrying a lady of his own race, proposed to meet her on the steamer and marry her before she landed. This step he proposed to take in the hope that, entering New Zealand as his -wife, she would be exempt from the necessity for paying the poll tax of £100. Further, the step was to be only a formal one to provide a marriage of which proof would be available., as the parties were already married and had a child. The position was put before the Collector of Customs at Auckland, and he, while himself considering the proposal legal, referred it to Wellington for consideration. In reply he received the opinion of the Solicitor-General (Professor Salmond), to which reference was made yesterday morning in a Wellington message. It is a peculiar circumstance of the matter that the oninion should have been held that the poll tax could be evaded in any way. The Chinese have to pay the tax, naturalised or unnaturalisedj married or single. It is one of the sorrows that matrimony does not divide by two. The Collector of Customs informed a reporter yesterday that the position did not seem to have been quite understood. In the first place, the poll tax could not be evaded by any Chinese desirous of making a settlement in New Zealand. Then, any Chinese entering the Dominion had also to pass an education test, by satisfying the Collector that he could read English. The word Chinese in that connection had a restricted meaning, for a member of the race who had become a naturalised British subject was no longer regarded as a Chinese within the meaning of the Immigration Restriction Act, and such a one would be exempt from the education test. According to the opinion expressed by Professor Salmond, if it could be proved that a Chinese woman had been married to a naturalised Chinese man, she would be exempt from the education test, the naturalisation being in effect extended to her by tho marriage. That would still be quite apart from the question of the poll tax. He considered that to prove most Chinese marriages in such a way as to satisfy British law would be most difficult unless special steps were taken, but the difficulty could bo got over in various ways, including, for instance, marriage in such a place as Hongkong. The anticipation of difficulty in bringing the wife to New Zealand, suggested in the Wellington message, was, ihe Collector said, unfounded; for a naturalised Chinese subject could certainly introduce his better half into the Dominion, on payment of the poll tax, without difficulty. Professor Salmond's opinion included a highly interesting statement with regard to the children of a marriage contracted outside New Zealand. According to the Solicitor-General the Aliens Act provided that the children of naturalised persons were not themselves naturalised unless during minority they resided' with their parents in New Zealand. That is to say, such children remained Chinese within the meaning of the Immigration Restriction Act until they resided in New Zealand with their parents, and they could not do that until they could pass the education test. In the case of young children, Mr. Ridings remarked, that was manifestly an impossibility, and the construction put upon the law in that respect made the lot of the Chinese immigrant a very, hard one. The Collector stated that he did not know of any case in which a marriage had been contracted by a Chinese with a woman before landing in order to evade payment of the poll tax. As far as he knew the matter had not gone beyond the suggestion. New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 14500, 14 October 1910, Page 7