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Background to alien registration and naturalisation

Prior to the coming into force of the Citizenship Act, 1977 (on 1 January 1978), the key statute was the Aliens Act 1866 and its amendments. This established a procedure whereby specific naturalisation ordinances/acts (passed since 1846) were no longer necessary. The Act also established personal and property rights for so-called ''friendly'' aliens.

Procedure: 

1. Applicant submitted to the Governor a memorial requesting letters of
    Naturalization be granted stating
    a. his name, age, birth-place, residence, occupation
    b. length of residence in New Zealand and his desire to settle
     permanently.

After 1914 the form provided for specifying the name of the ship by which the applicant arrived; after 1928 a minimum of 5 years’ residence and competence in English (a short oral and written test) was insisted on.

2. The memorial was in the form of a statutory declaration requiring a
    witness to the applicant’s signature and payment of stamp duty.

3. The memorial was to be attached a certificate of the applicant’s good
    repute signed by a Resident Magistrate or Justice of the Peace.
    However, by the 1890s such certificates were acceptable to the
    Colonial Secretary’s office only if from a Magistrate. Increasingly
    magistrates sought a report from the local police before providing
    such certificates.

4. If naturalization was approved by the Colonial Secretary/Minister of
    Internal Affairs, the applicant was directed to take the oath of
    allegiance before a Magistrate or Justice of the Peace.

5. Payment of fees.

6. Issue of letters (Certificate) and filing of duplicate.

7. Notification in New Zealand Gazette.

Implications:

1.  The wife of an alien naturalized before 1935 became automatically
    a British subject; after 1934 this was not automatic but by making a
    declaration of desire to acquire British nationality.

 2. After 13 May 1924 a child born before the effective date of his
    parent’s naturalization could be inserted in the parent’s certificate:
    before then such a child if living in New Zealand during his minority
    with a naturalized parent was deemed to be naturalized.

Restrictions:

   1. During both World Wars naturalization virtually ceased (expect
    to permit friendly aliens to serve abroad). For a few years afterwards
    people born in what was been enemy territory were given low priority.

   2. Naturalization of Asiatic was increasingly restricted by the 1880s and
    not significantly eased until after 1945.

Alien Registration:

This was Introduced in 1917 and suspended in 1923. It was reintroduced (by emergency regulation) in
In 1939, confirmed by state in 1948 then repealed by the Citizenship Act 1977.

DOCUMENTATION:
a. Naturalisation

1. The memorials were filed in the Colonial Secretary’s office (later Department of
  Internal Affairs – even for aliens naturalised in Western Samoa and the Cook
  Islands.) The relevant Archives series is IA 1. The copies of the letter (certificate)
  of naturalisation issued are found in IA 53.

2. The principal finding aid is the Register of persons naturalised in New Zealand
  before 1945 and succeeding volumes. (This supersedes the Register of Alien
  Friends published in 1925). Details given in the Register include both the
  References to the file containing the memorial, the copy of the letters of
  naturalisation issued, and the effective date of naturalisation.

3. Not all applications were approved or completed. These may be traced (before
  1913) in the general indexes to letters received by the Colonial Secretary under
  the applicant’s name or (the only way where the applicant did not himself apply)
  under the headings ‘Naturalisation’.

4. The Register before 1948 is unreliable for references to Colonial Secretary’s
  files during the period when naturalisation was by ordinance and stature (up to
  1866).

b. Aliens

1. There are no individual registration files for aliens in the period 1917-23, although
  fragments appear in the rare instances of re-registration during World War II. For
  aliens interned there is usually a Defence (Ex 29/series) and local Camp file
  re-files under a P.O.W. number. These are accessible by card index. A handful
  of Aliens Enemy Commission files is complemented by Police reports on suspect
  aliens (to which access is still closed.)

2. The New Zealand Register of Aliens compiled by the Statistics Department who
  was responsible for alien registration in World War I.

3. Alien registration for World War II is documented by
  a. classification decisions of Aliens Authorities and Aliens Appeal Tribunal
   (Justice files J.1939/50/….J.1945/50….)

  b. police reports on individual aliens (closed to public access)

  c. camp records for those aliens interned (Arm files, D,336/-)

Alien registration files

The registration files in this series refer to individuals who were required to register as aliens under the Aliens Act 1948. It includes the files of those people who had previously registered under the Aliens Control Emergency Regulations 1939 and were required to re-register. Upon their re-registration, their files were simply reclassified into series 504 from the previous series of alien registration files (series 489).

As this series was still restricted and there are two indexes to the files (series 960 and 961), no individual listing of the files was originally undertaken except for W5675.

However, now that a number of files have become open, individual listings of these files has been completed and these are now  all listed on Archway.

The files relating to aliens registered in Auckland were numbered into the same sequence, but appear to have used a separate block of numbers, from 30,000 to 69,000. They are included in this series, and were transferred to the Auckland Office of Archives New Zealand from the Auckland District Court in 2012. Many of the earlier files in this sequence also retain their earlier numbers from the pre-1948 registration system, and have been listed in both series.