The Chinese Must Go

by Beth Lew-Williams

  and that he had seen “a decrease in Chinese immigration.”24 Exclusion had

  failed to end Chinese migration, but it quieted anti- Chinese vigilantism for

  the time being. As long as the federal government appeared vigilant at the

  border, the people need not intervene.

  But not every one was satisfied. Before the law went up for renewal in

  May 1892, Representative Thomas J. Geary, a California Demo crat, saw an

  opportunity to further strengthen exclusion. He introduced a bill that pro-

  hibited the migration of Chinese to the United States in absolute terms, with

  the sole exception of Chinese diplomats, and explic itly “abrogate[d], set aside

  and repeal[ed]” all treaties that contradicted his proposed law. Any unau-

  thorized mi grant discovered crossing the border would be subject to five

  years’ imprisonment in addition to deportation. Furthermore, the law would

  require all Chinese currently living within the United States to register

  and carry internal passports to prove their right to remain in the country.

  Any Chinese person found to be unregistered would be summarily deported

  to China.25 This would take the territorial border, which the commission

  had recently surveyed, and move it deep into the nation’s interior.

  AFTERLIVES UNDER EXCLUSION

  203

  Though Congress uniformly supported the concept of exclusion, many

  members hesitated to support these extreme mea sures. Senator John Sherman

  argued that the Geary bill was “harsh and cruel, against the spirit of our

  civilization, far beyond anything before in severity,” and Congressman

  Charles Hooker complained, “The bill proposes to abrogate every treaty that

  has ever been made with the Chinese Empire.” In response, Geary touted

  the severity of the bill and dismissed all diplomatic concerns. “The bill passed

  four years ago by Congress was itself an abrogation,” he asserted, and at that

  time the Supreme Court had affirmed Congress’s plenary power. Geary saw

  no reason to allow diplomacy to guide U.S. immigration law.26

  Detractors of the bill managed to weaken it slightly before it gained broad

  congressional support and was signed into law on May 5, 1892, by President

  Benjamin Harrison.27 The Geary Act continued to exempt Chinese mer-

  chants, students, and diplomats, but required exempt classes to demonstrate

  “affirmative proof ” of their right to land. It also denied bail to those who

  sought court appeals, subjected unlawful mi grants to a year of prison and hard

  labor, required all resident Chinese to obtain a “certificate of residence,” and

  gave the secretary of the trea sury broad powers to “make such rules and regu-

  lations as may be necessary for the efficient execution of this act.”28 The act

  formalized many of the policies that officials had experimented with since

  1888, including imprisonment and registration. The former would be de-

  clared unconstitutional in Wong Wing v. United States (1896), but the latter

  would prove transformative. Local and federal officials could demand Chinese

  mi grants’ papers anytime and anywhere. As contemporaries observed, this

  new registration system effectively transformed the Chinese Exclusion Act

  into a Chinese expulsion act by targeting long- term residents.29

  The Chinese community in the United States met the 1892 law with

  unpre ce dented levels of re sis tance.30 Long before passports or government

  identification of any kind became common, the Chinese community per-

  ceived the internal registration system as dehumanizing. The Chinese Six

  Companies in San Francisco urged all Chinese in the United States to defy

  the order to register. “The law degrades the Chinese and if obeyed will put

  them lower than the meanest people,” declared the Six Companies. “Let us

  stand together . . . then we can and will break this infamous law.” In an act

  of mass civil disobedience and a display of fealty to Chinese leaders, tens of

  204 EXCLUSION

  thousands of Chinese workers refused to register. Once the deadline

  passed on May 5, 1893, these men and women became subject to summary

  deportation.31

  The Six Companies raised a hundred thousand dollars to challenge the

  law, informed the federal government of their intent, and arranged to im-

  mediately test its constitutionality. While the Supreme Court considered the

  test case, Fong Yue Ting v. U.S. (1893), the attorney general instructed local

  officials to refrain from any arrests, and the secretary of state urged western

  governors to take “precautions to preserve the peace and prevent riotous

  proceedings against the Chinese.”32 The court’s answer did not take long.

  Within two weeks, the Supreme Court upheld the law by a 6 to 3 majority.

  The court ruled that Congress not only had an “absolute and unqualified”

  right to “prohibit and prevent” mi grants from entering the country but

  also had the right “to expel or deport foreigners who have not been natural-

  ized.” (As the court well knew, Chinese aliens were ineligible for naturaliza-

  tion.) Furthermore, the majority ruled that Chinese mi grants had no claims

  to due pro cess when facing deportation because immigration proceedings

  were “in no proper sense a trial” and deportation was “not a punishment.”

  In 1889, Chae Chan Ping had established Congress’s plenary power to exclude

  aliens at Amer ica’s borders. Now, Fong Yue Ting established the authority to

  expel aliens residing within the United States. From this point forward,

  border control was no longer confined to the nation’s borders but stretched

  into the interior.33

  The verdict took the Chinese community by surprise and flummoxed the

  second Cleveland administration. Only 13,243 Chinese had registered by the

  deadline, leaving as many as a hundred thousand Chinese in the United States

  subject to immediate deportation.34 For the first time, the United States could

  perform mass ethnic cleansing through immigration law. The federal gov-

  ernment, however, was not prepared to take this step.

  In September 1893, Secretary of the Trea sury J. G. Carlisle reported to

  the Senate that the law had caused a financial crisis. He estimated that at

  least eighty- five thousand Chinese were “liable to deportation under the law”

  and the “lowest cost for transporting Chinamen from San Francisco to

  Hong- kong is $35 per capita.” Assistant U.S. Attorney Willis Witter put the

  figure much higher. “I have been laughed at,” he complained, “for stating

  that $10,000,000 would be required to deport the Chinese in this country,

  AFTERLIVES UNDER EXCLUSION

  205

  and yet I maintain that I have not overestimated the sum necessary.” He

  priced passage from San Francisco to China at fifty- five dollars per capita,

  marshal’s fees at three dollars, attorney fees at ten, detention for at least two

  weeks at seven, and for Chinese captured anywhere other than San Fran-

  cisco, the cost of transportation to the port. In the fall of 1893, the U.S. Trea-

  sury had only $25,502.13 available to enforce the law. In addition, the

  customs ser vice did not have the resources to arrest and pro cess more than


  ten thousand Chinese per year, which meant that deportation of all unregis-

  tered mi grants would likely take a de cade or longer. Exclusion had expanded

  U.S. border control, but it remained a poorly funded arm of the federal

  government. By failing to comply with internal registration in large num-

  bers, Chinese residents had rendered the Geary Act unenforceable.35

  Money and manpower were not the only obstacles to mass deporta-

  tion. Congressional backing of the act began to waver in the face of Chinese

  protests. Most congressmen had supported the mea sure as a form of strin-

  gent exclusion, but many balked at the prospect of wholesale removal. Pres-

  ident Cleveland shared this growing ambivalence, as Chinese diplomats

  threatened to expel Americans from China and withdraw their del e ga tion

  in the United States. Cleveland’s concern turned to alarm when rumors

  surfaced that anti- American sentiment was brewing in China and could

  threaten U.S. trade interests. The New York Times observed that “any

  Eu ro pean power of the first class” that faced similarly offensive immigration

  policy would find “ample cause of war.” Cleveland, having made a similar

  calculation, hastily ordered two additional gunboats to join the naval fleet

  in the Pacific.36

  As another recession hit the nation and the federal government continued

  to refuse to enforce the Geary Act, homegrown vio lence became the more

  palpable threat. U.S. Attorney George Denis in Los Angeles reported, “The

  wage- earners and farmers, instigated no doubt by the financial stringency

  of the times, have been doing every thing in their power to remove the Chi-

  nese from the country.” Since “ these people have gone beyond the pale of

  public discussion and meeting,” he wrote that local and state law enforce-

  ment was preparing for “impending riots and threatened bloodshed.”37

  Vio lence came in August and September 1893, when local police and state

  militia clashed with anti- Chinese vigilantes in four California cities: Merced,

  Stockton, Redlands, and Selma. Near Fresno, arsonists torched businesses

  206 EXCLUSION

  employing Chinese workers, extremists bombed Chinese shops, and gangs

  forced Chinese laborers out of vineyards and fruit fields. The vio lence was not

  limited to California; in the remote mining town of Como, Colorado,

  white arsonists set fire to Chinese cabins, while in Butteville, Oregon, a white

  mob blew up two Chinese houses and dragged Chinese hop- pickers out of

  town. As vigilantes attacked their Chinese neighbors, the San Francisco Call

  declared an “open war— Californians against the Administration.” Although

  the vio lence held a po liti cal message aimed at Washington, D.C., yet again,

  the Chinese, not the administration, seemed to be the ones bearing the brunt

  of that war.38

  While some anti- Chinese activists urged vio lence, others believed that vi-

  olent action could undermine the effort to expel the Chinese. Instead, they

  advocated using the legal system to compel the government to enforce the

  Geary Act. The Labor Council of San Francisco urged all union members

  to “ascertain the names and addresses of every unregistered Chinaman living

  or working in your vicinity.” With the help of these lists and union lawyers,

  citizens could walk into the federal district court to make complaints against

  specific Chinese aliens. Through a deliberate and or ga nized system of cit-

  izen surveillance, the Labor Council hoped to make it impossible for the

  federal government to avoid deporting unregistered Chinese. This extralegal

  system of reporting proved laborious and expensive, but county judges played

  their part and began to issue warrants. Soon sixty- four Chinese were detained

  in San Francisco jails, awaiting deportation. Exclusion, like restriction,

  had become a collaboration between private and public forces.39

  Local crises demanded federal intervention, but what form it would take

  remained an open question. Congressman Geary, for one, argued that

  growing anti- Chinese vio lence was a reason to enforce the law as written.

  “We know,” he told Congress, “that [the Chinese] are liable at any time to

  be imposed upon by mobs, their property destroyed, and prob ably their lives

  taken.” This grisly fact made deportation financially expedient, argued Geary,

  since the government was “liable for the protection of every chinaman [ sic]

  within our borders.” He reminded Congress that the U.S. government had

  already paid China hundreds of thousands of dollars to redress the Rock

  Springs massacre and vio lence on the West Coast, implying that deporta-

  tion would be cheaper than continuing to pay for Chinese lives lost in Amer-

  i ca.40 This callous calculation did not persuade many.

  AFTERLIVES UNDER EXCLUSION

  207

  In November 1893, Congress amended the law to grant Chinese mi grants

  six additional months to register and avert mass deportation. To appease ar-

  dent exclusionists, the McCreary amendment also took several new steps to

  tighten the law. It required two non- Chinese witnesses to prove a merchant’s

  class, required that certificates of residence include photo graphs, denied bail

  to Chinese awaiting deportation, required U.S. marshals to carry out all

  orders for deportations, and ordered the immediate deportation of all Chi-

  nese convicted of felonies. The extended registration period succeeded in

  alleviating the situation at hand. After the failed legal challenge by the Chi-

  nese and their imprisonment in San Francisco, and in the face of spreading

  anti- Chinese vio lence, Chinese workers and diplomats abandoned their pro-

  tests. In 1894, the Trea sury Department reported that 106,811 Chinese had

  registered.41 That same year, China retroactively approved the essential as-

  pects of the Geary Act in the Gresham- Yang Treaty. The United States ap-

  parently held sufficient power to unilaterally exclude the Chinese and to force

  Chinese diplomats to go along.42

  Although U.S. judges, officials, and diplomats managed to quash the anti-

  registration movement, the Chinese did win one implicit concession. By

  refusing to comply with federal law, they had tested the nation’s commit-

  ment to a policy of deportation and found that American leaders lacked the

  ability and desire to expel the Chinese population en masse. In addition,

  Chinese mi grants soon learned how to use the registration system to their

  own advantage. While registration aided U.S. officials in identifying undoc-

  umented mi grants, it also allowed registered Chinese workers the ability to

  exit and reenter the United Sates with the aid of their new passports. At first,

  passports increased the number of Chinese arrivals, providing a pretext for

  fraud, just as return certificates once had.43 Yet again, the Chinese proved

  nimble in their strategies of re sis tance. Facing a new technology of control,

  Chinese mi grants saw a new mechanism for subversion.

  Besides the implementation of a registration system, the most transfor-

  mative section of the Geary Act turned out to be the powers of discretion it

  granted to federal administrators. In 1898
, President William McKinley ap-

  pointed Terence V. Powderly, former leader of the Knights of Labor, to the

  post of U.S. commissioner- general of immigration. Enforcing exclusion with

  the utmost vigor, Powderly and his successor Frank Sargent attempted to

  use their administrative discretion to prohibit all Chinese mi grants except

  208 EXCLUSION

  diplomats. Attorney General John W. Griggs helped narrow the definition

  of exempt classes to promote this end. He ruled that while the Exclusion

  Act exempted “merchants,” it did not exempt traders, salesmen, buyers, and

  clerks. Similarly, the Trea sury Department affirmed the exemption of stu-

  dents, but not teachers, and demanded that all Chinese students declare their

  intent to repatriate. To combat the prob lem of “in transit” mi grants, Pow-

  derly made a new regulation in 1900 requiring those in transit to pres ent a

  through ticket, furnish a bond of five hundred dollars, produce four photo-

  graphs, and convince the collector of customs of their true intent to travel

  through, rather than remain in, the United States.44

  “The true theory is not that all persons may enter this country who are

  not forbidden,” explained Griggs in 1898, “but that only those are entitled

  to enter who are expressly allowed.” Local immigration raids, from San Fran-

  cisco to Chicago to Boston, brought border control into the nation’s interior.

  In 1902, the Exclusion Act was renewed again, and two years later it was

  extended in defi nitely. Court rulings further broadened the power of the law.

  In United States v. Ju Toy (1905), the Supreme Court ruled that even Chinese

  claims of U.S. citizenship stood within the realm of plenary power and did

  not necessitate judicial review. In the wake of this ruling, Chinese were

  presumed to be alien and denied the ability to contest this presumption in

  court.45

  Even with new regulations, immigration officials never managed to ex-

  clude the majority of Chinese mi grants arriving in the United States. Be-

  tween 1894 and 1905, the ac cep tance rate averaged 85 percent, reaching a

  low in 1904 when the customs ser vice rejected a rec ord 29.4 percent of Chi-

  nese arrivals.46 But even at this height of exclusion, undocumented mi grants

  continued to enter the country undetected, streaming across the northern