CO129-590-11 Commission of Enquiry into irregularities in Immigration Departments 22-4-1941 - 19-12-1941 — Page 87

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the numbers to be expected to enter H.K. without documents after

the date of enforcement.

The second feature concerns several recommendations which

have not been embodied in our Ordinance as it stands today, the

provision of a self-balancing fund for the purposes of the depart-

ment (para.23), and the penalising of unlawful entry (para.20).

The former recommendation was definitely rejected, but whatever

reasona existed for ita rejection are not recorded in my files

which have come to my eye. This departure from the ucheme, as I

shail show hereafter, was by far the more important of the two and

a fruitful source of difficulties, especially of the wrangling over

my imprest account. The failure to implement the latter

recommendation was most probably an oversight; at least it is hard

to reconcile the fact that it is an offence to enter the Colony by

the Northern frontier except under certain conditions (3.8 of the

Ordinance), with the absence of any section to make it an offence

to enter by ship without the permission of the landgration Officer.

This point may seem in itself unimportant, but it had the affect

of making the troublesome deposit system almost unavoidable, ami

I shall explain in detail later how that system, combined with the

inelastic methods of the Treasury, was the chief cause of such

Vinancial confusion as came about. For the present it is enough

to say that as it is manifestly impossible to watch a ship during

the entirety of its stay in port and because the accommodation for

detenus is limited, the only practicable method of dealing with the

passenger who arrives without the necessary permit was to release

him after taking such security as he could give for his eventual

compliance with the law.

I shall return to the above points later when I come to

deal systematically with the difficulties encountered in the admini-

stration of the Ordinance; for the present I «ish, to make matters

clearer, to deal with the difficulties in historical order as they

arose

the

I was first made aware that I was selected to administer