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HONG KONG.
9th April, 1941.
Your Excellency,
By Proclamation dated 27th February, 1941, and made under section 2 of the Commissioners Powers Ordinance, 1886, we were appointed Commissioners with the following terms of reference:
A. To inquire into and report on
(1) the manner in which the Immigration Department has been administered since
its inception;
(2) the manner, in which its staff has been assembled and the suitability of those
appointed or recruited;
I
(3) the adequacy or otherwise of the financial system instituted in it;
(4) the agency system instituted by it;
(5) the treatment accorded to, and the facilities afforded to, the public (whether as individuals or institutions) with which the departinent and its personnel have been brought into contact,
B. to receive oral and written evidence upon the foregoing matters,
C. to ascertain and report on whether there has been any avoidable lack of efficiency,
judgment or tact in relation to the matters comprised in paragraph A,
D.
to make such relevant recommendations as may commend themselves to the commis- sioners.
2. We held our first meeting on 10th March. March owing to the indisposition of Mr. R. A. D. then sat on 25th, 26th, 27th and 29th March and on taking of evidence.
We then had to adjourn until 25th Forrest, Immigration Officer. We 1st April, when we concluded the
3. We now have the honour to submit to Your Excellency the following report.
Historical Outline.
4. The genesis of the Immigration Department is the report of Mr. S. M. Middle- brook of the Malayan Civil Service who visited Hong Kong last summer and duly reported on 21st August, 1940. The proposals in that report were slightly modified by Mr. Middlebrook on 21st September, 1940, but these modifications are irrelevant for our present purposes.
5. Legislative effect was given to the approved recommendation in a Bill published in the Gazette for the first time on 12th November and subsequently enacted as the Immigration Control Ordinance, 1940 (No. 32 of 1940), which was assented to by His Excellency the Officer Administering the Government on 29th November, 1940.
6. Mr. Middlebrook had stressed the importance of issuing as many documents as possible in the period intervening between the general announcement to the public and the starting of the scheme. Therefore, even before the Bill was gazetted, an Immigration Officer had been designated, Government's choice falling on Mr. R. A. D. Forrest, who was then Postmaster General. The exact date on which Government's decision was conveyed to Mr. Forrest is impossible to ascertain but it would appear to have been sometime in the last week of September.
7. Mr. Forrest had several conversations with Mr. Middlebrook before the latter sailed for Singapore, and at some at least of these the question of the staffing of the new Department was discussed, and a tentative staff cadre was submitted to Government by Mr. Middlebrook. Mr. Forrest as early as 6th October was selecting officers for the new Department, and in a minute of 12th October he suggested starting work on 1st November. For various reasons delays occurred, but on 18th November the Immigration Office in Marina House was opened to the public, and the same day Mr. Forrest took over the Passport Control branch of the Police Department together with the shroff and clerk attached thereto.
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