The Chinese Must Go

by Beth Lew-Williams

  men, and every effort will be made to smuggle large numbers of them into

  this country.” This was particularly easy during the summer months, when

  the space between British Columbia and Washington Territory effectively

  narrowed, as Chinese mi grants found it increasingly fast and simple to cross

  the divide in small boats or canoes. Beecher believed that few on the East

  Coast understood the true threat of Chinese undocumented migration, but

  warned that “public feeling upon the subject here is very strong.”79

  Vio lence broke out on September 7, 1885. When thirty- seven Chinese

  workers arrived in the small town of Squak Valley, Washington Territory,

  to work as hops- pickers, some local workers deci ded to strike back. White

  and Indian men attacked the Chinese camp at night, blindly shooting at

  their tents, attempting to drive them out of town. On September 23, Col-

  lector Beecher sent a long, pleading letter to the Secretary of the Trea sury.

  He did not know how to continue enforcement of the Chinese Restriction

  Act and knew that his inaction could lead to further anti- Chinese vio lence.

  In the letter, his distress is palpable:

  As it now stands in this District we are unable to decide how to act. . . . I am

  met with a demand for fifty dollars per head by the Canadian Customs au-

  thorities before I can land them, this of course I cannot pay from my own

  pocket, nor can I get it from the funds now already exhausted, hence I have

  to bring the Chinamen back to our shores again, paying again their fares and

  meals, for the steamboat com pany will not transport them free. I have so far

  turned them over to the U.S. Marshal pending a decision and he has impris-

  EXPERIMENTS IN RESTRICTION

  83

  oned them in the U.S. Penitentiary, which is illegal, but even if I did not do

  this, how am I to act? . . . This is a question that unless some settlement is

  made between the two Governments, will soon lead to Trou ble, as the

  Chinamen are being run over the line in large numbers and the citizens of

  this Territory have already begun to take very deci ded steps and much fear is

  felt here that open bloodshed will be the result if something deci ded and defi-

  nite is not done before long. . . . Will the Department give me a decision

  how under the circumstances to act[?]80

  Beecher could find no way to enforce the Chinese Restriction Act along the

  U.S.- Canadian boundary given the Canadian head tax and complete lack

  of funds. For the previous three years, local customs officials had gone out-

  side the law to make enforcement more manageable and affordable, but the

  situation was now beyond such local ingenuity. Beecher could not negotiate

  with Canada or raise funds for enforcement; the federal government in D.C.

  needed to step in.

  The Trea sury Department’s initial reaction was to pass this prob lem onto

  another department. Forwarding Beecher’s letter to the attorney general,

  the trea sury secretary asked for any “opinion as to what action can be taken” to

  relieve government officers from “serious embarrassment.” Although the

  letter did not directly ask if the Department of Justice could offer any

  financial assistance, the attorney general understood the subtext. In his reply

  he made it clear that “the appropriation for expenses of the United States

  courts will cover only those expenses of the Chinese emigration cases in

  Washington Territory, which are incurred in the courts proper.” The Depart-

  ment of Justice would not pay for the cost of deportation or the Canadian

  head tax. The attorney general admitted he saw “no way of immediately

  relieving the difficulty mentioned” and suggested that the issue “must be laid

  before congress.”81

  The Department of the Trea sury did not reply to Collector Beecher until

  October 15, more than three weeks after he wrote his pleading letter. The

  response detailed the lengths to which the department had gone to investi-

  gate the matter, but in the end offered no advice. It assured Beecher that the

  matter had been “deemed of considerable importance” and had been for-

  warded to the U.S. attorney general. Unfortunately, it appeared that there

  was “no appropriation what ever available for the purpose of paying the

  84 RESTRICTION

  expenses of carry ing out the said act, and that the attorney general sees no

  way at this time of relieving the difficulties mentioned.” The only option

  remaining was to lay the expenses before Congress and ask for additional

  appropriations, which the secretary of the trea sury promised to do. The

  letter concluded, “The Department is unable to issue any definite instruc-

  tions for your guidance in carry ing out the requirements of the said act

  under the existing circumstances.”82 Its message was clear: the collector of

  customs in Washington Territory would receive no federal aid in resolving

  the brewing migration crisis.

  Local officials in Washington Territory had several alternatives for re-

  sponses to this legal and financial deadlock. One solution was to simply ignore

  the stream of undocumented Chinese mi grants crossing the U.S.- Canadian

  boundary. Collector Beecher was well aware that his officers were failing to

  enforce the Restriction Act, focusing instead on the policing of imports and

  exports. In July 1887, Collector Beecher wrote to the secretary of the trea-

  sury that the pres ent circumstances had created “a tendency among our

  officers to disregard this law, and allow Chinamen to enter the United

  States, without let or hindrance.”83 Beecher had no recourse to stop this

  negligence.

  Those officers who remained dedicated to border control had to find cre-

  ative ways to deport or punish the Chinese they captured. Sometimes cus-

  toms officers deci ded to defy Canadian law and “force [the Chinese] back

  into British Columbia” surreptitiously.84 This practice began after the Ca-

  nadian head tax law went into effect and continued for years. During an

  investigation in 1890, several Washington customs officials admitted that

  when they caught Chinese near the border, they often “sent them back even

  across the line a few miles, which of course we had no right to do, but we

  did.” One official claimed that he had been instructed by his superior to “put

  back” Chinese instead of bringing them before a commissioner. Another

  popu lar solution to the dilemma was to have Chinese fund their own depor-

  tations. Since customs officials could not pay the head tax, they would push

  arrested Chinese to raise fifty Canadian dollars. A federal judge stationed

  in Washington reported that most detained Chinese managed to pay the

  tax themselves, by borrowing the money from their friends, or to establish

  that they had previously paid the tax.85

  EXPERIMENTS IN RESTRICTION

  85

  Arrested Chinese who could not pay their own way found themselves in

  an unenviable state of limbo. The most vivid example comes from the East,

  where attempted entries by Chinese were far less common but not unheard

  of. On October 11, 1888, four Chinese attempted to cross the international

&n
bsp; border via the Niagara Suspension Bridge. Literally suspended in the air be-

  tween the two countries, the Chinese men found themselves trapped. U.S.

  officials refused their entry because they were Chinese laborers without

  return certificates, and Canadian officials refused their return because they

  had no papers proving they had paid the head tax and no money to do so.

  A U.S. official reported that the unwanted men remained on the bridge,

  “where they were certain to suffer much discomfort, to say nothing to the

  annoyance of the bridge companies.” Declared unauthorized mi grants by

  both the United States and Canada, these men had nowhere to go, and U.S.

  officials legally had nowhere to put them. Their eventual fate is unknown.86

  The crisis produced the first known incidents of indefinite immigrant

  detention in the United States.87 When Chinese were turned away at the

  U.S.- Canadian border starting in August 1885, U.S. marshals in Washington

  Territory began to bring them to the U.S. penitentiary at McNeil Island, in

  southern Puget Sound. Collector Beecher acknowledged that this practice

  was “without any reason or allowance by the law,” but he did not know what

  else to do. The unlawful detention of unauthorized mi grants began as an

  occasional and unofficial practice but soon became common procedure for

  U.S. commissioners in Washington. Prison and court rec ords reveal that be-

  tween 1885 and 1890 more than a hundred Chinese men were unlawfully

  detained for unauthorized migration, including Ah Wy and Ah Yuk, the

  young men found aboard the Eliza Anderson. Thirty- one of these men had

  received six- month sentences from local judges, even though incarceration

  was not authorized by the Chinese Restriction Act. While a few of these pris-

  oners were released after their terms ended, most were kept at McNeil

  Island for additional time without explanation. Seventy- one Chinese were

  detained without defined terms and ended up serving between one month

  and nearly three years while they “awaited trial” or “instructions from the

  Attorney General.”88

  In June 1889, Chief Justice of Washington Territory C. H. Hanford

  wrote to President Benjamin Harrison to plead mercy for some of the

  86 RESTRICTION

  longest- detained Chinese. He explained that nineteen Chinese men were

  arrested two years earlier, found to be unlawfully pres ent, and ordered de-

  ported to British Columbia. U.S. marshals were unable to deport the Chi-

  nese, however, because they were refused at the U.S.- Canadian border. The

  nineteen men were returned to an American courtroom where they were

  again convicted and ordered deported. After this second deportation at-

  tempt failed, U.S. marshals detained the Chinese mi grants at McNeil Is-

  land, where they remained when Hanford wrote to the president. Although

  Hanford had not presided over this par tic u lar case, the Chinese fell under

  his new jurisdiction and their predicament clearly weighed on him. “[I]n

  my humble opinion,” he wrote, “the spirit and letter” of the law “required

  such persons to be taken out of the country rather than to be detained

  within it for the purpose of undergoing punishment for no other reason

  than that the officers do not know what else to do with them.” He believed

  it was “contrary to the fundamental law of this nation that any being should

  be subjected to repeated imprisonments, amounting to perpetual incarcera-

  tion for not doing that which he is powerless to do.” He begged the presi-

  dent from the “goodness of [his] heart” to find a way to “relieve the officials

  in this territory from further embarrassment” and “set at liberty nineteen

  poor miserable captive strangers.”89

  Hanford’s letter was forwarded to Secretary of State Thomas Bayard, who

  contacted the Canadian government in hopes of a diplomatic solution. The

  Canadian privy council launched an internal investigation into the case to

  determine whether there was evidence that these Chinese could be legally

  returned to Canada. Local officials in British Columbia, including a Chinese

  translator working for the Canadian government, insisted that there was no

  evidence that the nineteen Chinese men came from Canada. Therefore, the

  Canadian government refused to receive them without payment of the head

  tax.90 As the two governments argued the case, showing none of the coopera-

  tion they would display in later de cades, the nineteen Chinese men remained

  locked on an island prison off the coast of Washington for another year.

  Restriction may not have slowed Chinese entry to the United States, but it

  still had a profound effect on the lives of Chinese mi grants. A few Chinese

  faced indefinite detention, many more lived in fear of federal officials, and

  EXPERIMENTS IN RESTRICTION

  87

  all found themselves occupying a newly precarious legal status. Anti- Chinese

  advocates had long maintained that the Chinese could never become Amer-

  ican, and now federal laws helped make it so. The American state held the

  power to turn presumptions of racial difference into categories of legal dis-

  advantage. Prohibitions on naturalization and restrictions on entry made all

  Chinese mi grants into permanent aliens and some into illegal aliens. The

  latter term had not yet gained popularity. There was no need for such a

  phrase. The Chinese were the only group to face systematic border control,

  so all unauthorized mi grants could be called “coolies,” “Chinese contraband,”

  or simply “Chinamen.” Without a system of identification, this meant that

  all Chinese, due to their appearance alone, could be suspected of fraudulent

  entry. Thanks to federal law, the Chinese wore their alienage on their bodies,

  and their bodies could serve as evidence of a crime.91

  While the Restriction Act had an unmistakable impact on the meaning

  of race and alienage, its role in federal centralization and border- making re-

  mains more ambiguous.92 Congress may have begun hesitant experiments

  in state- building, but it was local officials on the periphery who vigorously

  worked to give the law substance. Restriction did little to centralize state

  power in the nineteenth century; the law created no new federal agencies

  and, at first, few new jobs. And yet, it did expand the government’s reach.

  Restriction was enacted by a vast army of existing government officials

  (including diplomats, customs officers, federal marshals, police officers,

  judges, tax collectors, and jailers) and a polyglot group of private individuals

  (including militiamen, deputy sheriffs, ship captains, employers, informers,

  witnesses, and vigilantes). What appears to be a top- down effort was, pri-

  marily, a story of border- formation from the margins in.93

  Notably, the Chinese Restriction Act had this in common with the Fed-

  eral Immigration Act of 1882. The general immigration law, which followed

  on restriction’s heels, applied to all aliens and sought to regulate “any con-

  vict, lunatic, idiot, or any person unable to take care of himself or herself

  without becoming a public charge.” The law was designed to federalize the

  regulatio
n of undesirable Eu ro pean immigrants, which had previously been

  conducted on the state level. Though the law was federally authorized and

  funded, state agencies continued to administer it on a daily basis.94 In short,

  the general immigration law, like Chinese restriction, expanded the federal

  government’s reach without centralizing state power.

  88 RESTRICTION

  Since local officials steered the enforcement of restriction, their choice to

  enlist private citizens had significant implications. When Deputy Blake en-

  gaged in communal border control in Washington Territory, he sped up the

  U.S. border- making pro cess, helping to turn the legal border into a social

  real ity. But his extralegal actions also had the contradictory effect of under-

  mining the federal government’s control over its national borders. By re-

  cruiting community members, Blake helped create a form of participatory

  border control that blurred the line between state and nonstate actors. In an

  attempt to shore up U.S. sovereignty, customs officers handed state power

  to the people.

  Federal officials had encouraged a form of vigilantism, but balked when

  this extralegal border enforcement took a violent turn. In the summer of

  1885, when the federal government exhausted its appropriation and deporta-

  tion to Canada became untenable, it was clear to all that the government

  had lost any semblance of control. “ There is no longer any hope of obtaining

  relief from this Chinese curse through the laws enacted by Congress,” de-

  clared the Seattle Call. “Their inefficiency to prevent Chinese immigration

  has been demonstrated. To this northern country, bordering on British Co-

  lumbia, they absolutely afford no protection what ever.” Since the federal gov-

  ernment had failed, the paper concluded, “we must protect ourselves or be

  overrun by these heathen.”95 Abandoned by the state, “the people” must

  intervene to enforce the law.

  Part 2

  Vio lence

  3

  The Banished

  FOR GONG HENG, the job started like any other. He met a labor contractor

  in Seattle, Chin Lee Chong, who offered him a few months’ work before

  winter came. Soon, he and thirty- six other Chinese workers started the

  fifteen- mile trek to Squak Valley, Washington Territory. As they walked