600508-1939-Supplementary-Draft-Bill---Vagrancy-Amendment — Page 3

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4. Although there is provision as stated above in the legislation of this Colony for the deportation, of destitute. British subjects who do not belong to the Colony and also for the expulsion of immigrants who enter the Colony in contra- vention of the Immigration and Passports Ordinance, there is no provision except in the Emergency Regulations providing for the expulsion of those aliens who are not required to have passports or travel papers, who do not belong by birth or residence to the Colony, who pass in freely whenever they desire, who are destitute and unable to find work and who therefore can look only to public funds or private charity for their subsistence. Convicted alien mendicants can be deported under the Deportation of Aliens Ordinance, No. 39 of 1935, but it is considered more suitable in most cases that mendicants should be expelled under the new provisions introduced by this Bill.

5. Clause 5 of the Bill adds the words a mendicant or a destitute after the word "vagrant in section 26 of the 1897 Ordinance so as to bring mendicants and destitutes within the scope of that section. It is a necessary corollary to give effect to sub-section (1) of the new section 24A.

October, 1939.

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C. G. ALABASTER,

Attorney General.

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