About this item
- Title
- The first restrictions on immigration
- Content partner
- Manatū Taonga, the Ministry for Culture and Heritage
- Collection
- Te Ara - The Encyclopedia of New Zealand
- Description
In 1881 a law imposed a poll tax (initially of £10, raised in 1896 to £100) on all Chinese who sought to enter New Zealand. The number of Chinese who could come on any one ship was also limited. This was the first piece of legislation which restricted the entry of immigrants. The poll tax remained on the statute books until 1944, although the tax was not collected after 1934.
- Format
- Image
- Date created
- 4 March 2009
- Contributing partner
- Te Ara - The Encyclopedia of New Zealand
- URL
- https://teara.govt.nz/en/document/1366/the-first-restrictions-on-immigration
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http://www.teara.govt.nz/copyright, Crown Copyright administered through the New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage Te Manatu Taonga. All text licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 New Zealand Licence unless otherwise stated. Commercial re-use may be allowed on request. All non-text content is subject to specific conditions. Te Ara - The Encyclopedia of New Zealand Reference: New Zealand Statutes, 1881, pp. 301–3. This item has been provided for private study purposes (such as school projects, family and local history research) and any published reproduction (print or electronic) may infringe copyright law. It is the responsibility of the user of any material to obtain clearance from the copyright holder.
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Report this itemDigitalNZ brings together more than 30 million items from institutions so that they are easy to find and use. This information is the best information we could find on this item. This item was added on 29 April 2013, and updated 26 November 2025.
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