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Cape Attorney-General, may best be dealt with under the next heading, "Amending."
3. Amending.
It is a prominent object of the Bill to remove two limitations under the existing law, which are anomalous and inconvenient as between different parts of the Empire :--
(a) A certificate can be granted in the United Kingdom only to a person who, unless he be in the service of the Crown, has resided and intends to reside in the United Kingdom. In consequence, a man may have lived all his life in the United Kingdom and may have identified himself completely with British interests, but if he intends to go to the Colonies he cannot be naturalized; or, again, a man may have completely identified himself with British interests in a Colony, and may even have been naturalized there, but if he returns to the Mother-country he is an alien, and cannot enjoy the full privileges of a British subject until he has resided in the United Kingdom for at least five years. These limitations, and principally the latter, may be the cause of much hardship, and are certainly unpleasant and contrary to any feeling of solidarity in the Empire.
(b) A certificate of naturalization granted in a Colony has effect only
within that Colony.
Clause 7 meets the point (a) by enabling residence in His Majesty's dominions to be reckoned as regards both the past and the future for the purpose of the grant of a certificata by the Home Government. This is one of the two great concessions which the Bill was intended to offer to the Colonies. It was one of the main motives of the inquiry by the Committee which led to the Bill, and it might be the means of commending the Bill generally to the Colonies.
As to (b), clause 26 provides in effect that where the conditions of naturalization in a Colony are substantially the same as those required in the United Kingdom, an Order of His Majesty in Council may enable a certificate granted in that Colony to have effect throughout the Empire. The result is double: a Colonial certificate will be valid (1) in the United Kingdom, and (2) in other Colonies. Result No. I is the second main point which the Mother-country intended by the Bill to offer to the Colonies. It is on result No. 2 that the Cape Attorney-General bases his strongest objection to the Bill. He says in effect that the conditions of naturalization in the United Kingdom are so much more lax than they are in many of the Colonies, that their standard is not sufficient to make a Colonial certificate granted in accordance therewith acceptable in the Cape. His main reasons are two. asserts that, the discretion of the Secretary of State in granting or declining a He certificate being absolute, there is nothing to prevent the naturalization in the United Kingdom of (a) undesirables and even downright criminals, or (b) persons of non-European descent. As regards (a), the complete discretion of the Secretary of State should really be sufficient answer, especially if it be remembered (and it may not be known to the Cape Attorney-General) that every applicant for a certificate is required to produce four referees to his character and loyalty, and a fifth to his residence, and that in addition exhaustive police inquiries are made into every case, with the result that, so far as is known, no criminals have ever been naturalized, and many undesirables have been refused. At the same time, as a concession, it might be possible to insert words in the Bill, precluding from the chance of naturalization certain.categories of persons deemed to be unworthy thereof. These words would in practice make no difference. As regards (b), the arguments for and against the suggestion of excluding non-European races from naturalization in the British Empire are much the same as those indicated above as regards the law as to nationality by birth, but the point is in actual fact a very small one. The cases of English naturalization of persons of non-European races are extremely rare in England, and it may be doubted whether it has ever occurred that one of these persons has presented himself subsequently in any Colony. Further, the majority of the Colonies,
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Canada being a notable exception, have provided by their own laws that non-European races shall not be eligible for naturalization. The chances therefore of any individual Colony being damaged by the proposed obligation to admit to the privileges of a British subject any person naturalized under conditions similar to those in force in the United Kingdom are extremely small; and it may perhaps be adduced, in support of the suggestion that the Cape Attorney-General's fears are unnecessary, that Natal, who herself refuses to naturalize non-European races, has by her own law accepted as good within her borders an English certificate. It is submitted that the point is not one which, if subjected to explanation and discussion at the Conference, maintains itself as a serious objection to the proposed Imperial legislation.
It is possible that there may be a misapprehension to the effect that the Imperial Bill is to limit in some way the powers of a Colony in regard to naturalization; the fact is, of course, precisely the contrary. It is open to any Colony to make its conditions as to naturalization as stringent as she pleases, and all the Bill says is that if those conditions are not less stringent than those in force in the United Kingdom a certificate granted therein may run throughout the Empire.
There are other points of detail both in the Bill and in the Cape Attorney's criticisms which are rather of the nature of Committee points. They are perhaps unlikely to afford any serious obstacle to the progress of the Bill, and as they might tend somewhat to overshadow the main points at issue they have not been included in this Memorandum.
It may be observed that the proposal in the resolutions from New Zealand and Cape Colony for Imperial legislation on the whole subject, allowing merely local deviations, is far more open to Colonial objections and to difficulties than the way of arriving at Imperial uniformity-with some elasticity proposed in the Bill.
To sum up. The following suggestions are submitted :-
1. Nationality by Birth in Dominions. If objections and amendment are pressed, the Bill ought nevertheless to proceed, subject, if thought right, to further separate consideration of this point. The inclusion or exclusion of clause 28 (1) (a) makes no difference to the law.
2. Stiffening the Conditions of English Naturalization.-There is here no reason for stopping the Bill. As regards criminals, &c., the law might be expressed to be what is in fact the practice. As regards non-European races, it scarcely seems possible for England to discriminate by statutory exclusion; nor is there, in fact, much ground for the demand that she should do so.
3. Validity of Certificate throughout the Empire.-If the Colonies are not willing to accept broadly each other's certificates, or even an English certificate, the Mother-country can at all events take power to accept, as for the United Kingdom, a Colonial certificate granted in approved conditions. So far as the Mother-country is concerned this would remove. the main inconvenience in the present law; it is an offer which she can make willingly without objection from the Colonies and without asking anything in return, and in conjunction with the recognition of residence in British dominions as a qualification for a certificate in the United Kingdom-a proposal which seeins to be generally accepted-it is a considerable though not complete advance toward the solidarity of the Empire in the matter of nationality.
Home Office, April 1907.
APPENDIX IA. TO No. III.
J. P.
The rule which impresses on persons born within your Majesty's dominions the character of British subjects is open to some theoretical and some practical objectious, of the force of which we are aware. But it has, on the other hand, solid advantages. It selects as the test a fact readily provable; and this, in questions of nationality and allegiance is a point of material consequence. It prevents troublesome questions in cases (numerous in some parts of the
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