The Chinese Must Go
Page 34
any trou ble with white businesses. He explained to the interviewer, “I know
where they treat Chinese all right,— then I go. I stay away from other places.”
Some businesses, spaces, and towns were open to Chinese and others were
not. Armed with local knowledge, these men believed they could tell the
difference. Scholars have found no such clarity, peering at these local en-
counters from the distance of a century or more.97
Repeal and Regrets
As Amer ica entered the twentieth century, its policy of exclusion expanded
before it contracted. First, the United States slowly shifted from a policy of
Chinese exclusion to one of Asian exclusion. In the winter of 1907–1908, the
United States negotiated Japa nese restriction through a series of confidential
diplomatic notes known as the Gentlemen’s Agreement. Under the threat of
unilateral exclusion, the Japa nese government agreed to prevent the migra-
tion of Japa nese and Korean workers to the United States unless the laborers
had immediate family in Amer ica.98 In 1917, the United States unilaterally
excluded all mi grants from the “Asiatic barred zone,” which included India,
Burma, Thailand, Asiatic Rus sia, the Malay states, the East Indian Islands,
the Polynesian Islands, and parts of Arabia and Af ghan i stan. Following an
emergency stopgap in 1921, Congress passed the nation’s first comprehensive
immigration law in 1924, the National Origins Act (also known as the
Johnson- Reed Act), which instituted quotas for all Eu ro pean immigrants
and excluded the vast majority of Asians as “aliens ineligible to citizenship.”
In 1934, Congress went so far as to bar Filipinos with the Tydings- McDuffie
Act, despite their formal status as U.S. nationals.99
The United States began to dismantle Asian exclusion in the mid- twentieth
century, when World War II and the Cold War shifted geopolitics in the
Pacific. China became an essential American ally in the fight against Japan
during World War II. In an effort to undermine this military alliance, Japan
began propaganda campaigns in the Pacific, which highlighted Chinese ex-
232 EXCLUSION
clusion as evidence of American racism and hy poc risy. Fearing this tactic
would undermine Chinese morale, President Franklin D. Roo se velt urged
Congress to repeal exclusion for the “cause of winning the war and of estab-
lishing a secure peace.” In response, Congress passed the Magnuson Act of
1943, which repealed Chinese exclusion, allowed China an annual quota of
105 immigrants, and permitted legal Chinese residents to naturalize.100
The confluence of geopo liti cal pressure and domestic activism led to the
demise of the remaining Asian exclusion laws. In 1946, the Luce- Cel er Act
extended naturalization privileges to Asian Indians and Filipinos and granted
each nation an annual quota of one hundred immigrants. Comprehensive im-
migration reform began in 1952 with the Immigration and Nationality Act
(also known as the McCarran- Walter Act) which ended racial prerequisites for
naturalization and extended annual quotas to all nations, including those in
Asia. The law, however, still contained vestiges of Asian exclusion. While Eu-
ro pean immigrants were subject to quotas based on their nation of origin,
Asian immigrants were subject to quotas defined by racial ancestry. Whether
a person hailed from China or Canada, a Chinese was always a Chinese under
the law. In 1965, the amended Immigration and Nationality Act (or the Hart-
Cel er Act) fi nal y ended this racial y based quota system. The new law gave
preference to family reunification and skil ed migration, but granted the same
number of preference visas to every sending nation while capping the totals by
hemi sphere. This act, along with legislation al owing war brides and refugees,
dramatical y expanded the number of Asian immigrants and Asian Americans
in the United States. Recent immigration rates have made Asian Ameri-
cans the nation’s fastest growing ethnic group in the twenty- first century.101
Though Chinese exclusion is no more, its consequences live on. These dis-
criminatory laws transformed the Chinese American communities in ways
that cannot be undone, although the United States has occasionally tried.
The federal government temporarily offered status adjustment between 1956
and 1965 to Chinese mi grants who were willing to confess their unauthor-
ized status and report on family and friends in similar situations. The Con-
fession Program, designed to root out communists, brought 30,530 Chinese
out of the shadows. Many other unauthorized Chinese, fearful of the gov-
ernment’s intent, opted not to regularize. To this day, there are Chinese in
Amer i ca who live with the weight of an unlawful border crossing made
during the Exclusion Period.102
AFTERLIVES UNDER EXCLUSION
233
Chinese Americans with direct familial connections to exclusion, how-
ever, are in the minority. Less than 10 percent of Chinese Americans today
can trace their lineage back three generations in Amer i ca. This, too, is a
legacy of American gatekeeping. Through exclusion, deportation, and de-
terrence, U.S. immigration law split up Chinese families for over six de cades,
stunting subsequent generations and creating a lasting absence.103
In 2011 and 2012, at the urging of Chinese American community groups,
both houses of Congress unanimously passed resolutions of regret for Chinese
exclusion. It was only the fourth such expression to date, following resolu-
tions on the enslavement and segregation of African Americans, internment
of Japa nese Americans, and conquest of the Hawaiian Islands. The Senate
version declared deep regret for:
The enactment of the Chinese Exclusion Act and related discriminatory
laws that—
(1) resulted in the persecution and po liti cal alienation of persons
of Chinese descent;
(2) unfairly limited their civil rights;
(3) legitimized racial discrimination; and
(4) induced trauma that persists within the Chinese community.
Congress’s resolutions of regret represent a profound act of recognition. For
a moment, which later proved fleeting, American policymakers came together
to confront the racism that underwrote the nation’s policy of exclusion.104
Reflecting on the passage of the Senate resolution, Senator Patrick Leahy
(D- VT) voiced his hopes that it would “mark a step in the Senate’s pro gress
toward greater commitment to protecting the civil and constitutional rights
of all Americans, regardless of race or ethnicity.”105 No doubt many mem-
bers of Congress shared this egalitarian sentiment. His rhe toric, however,
glosses over the fact that most Chinese who faced discrimination under
exclusion were not “Americans.” They were aliens. Congress’s declaration of
regret reaffirmed its commitment to equal protection for all U.S. citizens,
but it sidestepped a critical question that the history of exclusion raises: What
rights can an alien claim in modern Amer ica?
In the nineteenth century, the “heathen Chinaman” formed the social
and legal basis for
modern American alienage, but the category itself and its
234 EXCLUSION
profound significance has far outlived him. To date, the Supreme Court has
not extended the same constitutional guarantees of equal protection and due
pro cess to aliens in matters of immigration. Plenary power continues to en-
able the federal government to restrict migration based on nationality and
class routinely, and, potentially, to bar aliens based on religion and race as
well. In the twenty- first century, many aliens can be summarily removed
without a court hearing and those who do stand before a judge have no guar-
antee of government- appointed counsel.106 Inevitably, these legal disadvan-
tages have bled into the social realm. Immigrants, especially those deemed
undesirable or unlawful, occupy a particularly vulnerable space in Amer i-
ca’s neighborhoods, workplaces, and imagined community. If the history of
Chinese exclusion teaches us about the perils of racial discrimination, it
should also warn us about the dangerous inequalities produced by alienage.
EPILOGUE
The Modern American Alien
“A TOLERANCE OF foreign faces, garbs, and tongues is, perhaps, the birth-
right of citizens of New- York,” opined the editors of the New York Times in
1890. On the streets of the “polyglot city,” Americans, Germans, Dutch,
British, and Irish now regularly mixed with the people of Scandinavia, Bo-
hemia, Armenia, Japan, Rus sia, and China. But even when surrounded by
other foreigners, “the Chinese within our gates” seemed “more alien than
any” according to the paper. And it was not only among immigrants that
the Chinese stood out. “The black man and the red man are better liked,”
commented the editors. “With the proper care and teaching, with fair treat-
ment as citizens, the red and black assimilate and become of us, to the
extent that we are willing they should.” “Not so the Chinaman,” concluded
the Times. “The Chinese are not to be digested.”1
In retrospect, the making of the Chinese alien looks peculiar against
the larger backdrop of late- nineteenth- century Amer i ca. With the end of
the Civil War, after all, came a dramatic expansion of U.S. citizenship to
people who stood outside the traditional bounds of whiteness. The 1866 Civil
Rights Act and Fourteenth Amendment made Amer ica’s former slaves into
citizens by virtue of their birth on American soil. Though these mea sures
still excluded “Indians not taxed,” Congress began, in piecemeal fashion, to
extend citizenship to rising numbers of Native Americans in the de cades
that followed. In part, the postbellum reconfiguration of formal citizen-
ship was driven by pragmatic concerns. In the South, African American
citizenship helped dismantle the former Confederacy, and in the West, Native
American citizenship accelerated the dispossession of tribal lands. But lofty
235
236
THE CHINESE MUST GO
ideals of racial inclusion also played a vital role. Radical Republicans envi-
sioned a state- guided pro cess of assimilation and incorporation that would
enfold the “black” and “red” races into the nation and its polity. Through
the reconstruction of the South and the West, the federal government
would mold these “uncivilized” peoples into worthy citizens. Federal proj ects
of prolonged naturalization could be coercive or even violent, but envi-
sioned a more inclusive Amer ica.2
Why, then, did Chinese exclusion and the modern American alien emerge
at this time? Looking back on this turn toward racial liberalism, the treat-
ment of the Chinese may appear anomalous. But in fact, these histories of
rigid exclusion and radical inclusion are two sides of the same coin. The post-
bellum period saw both the creation of the modern American citizen and
the modern American alien, a synchrony that was not coincidental. There
could be no substantive concept of alienage in American law and society be-
fore there was a meaningful concept of citizenship. And it was only after
the Civil War that the national citizen was born.
Of course, there were both citizens and aliens in the antebellum period, but
at that time citizenship and alienage played only a minor role in defining a
person’s rights and status within society. This was due, in part, to the frag-
mentary nature of citizenship in the early nineteenth century and, even more
so, to the many competing forms of social membership available. Since the
Constitution had not created a single, formal, undifferentiated notion of na-
tional citizenship, states reserved the right to grant citizenship and enu-
merate its privileges. This resulted in diverse and disparate civil rights, many
of which ended at the state border. In addition, local and state jurisdictions
recognized many other forms of social membership from which individuals
derived their rights, privileges, and duties. An individual’s status was based
on sex, race, freedom, property, marital status, church affiliation, state of resi-
dence, and more. With these many forms of membership came many forms
of exclusion. Instead of a national gate separating Americans from foreigners,
there were internal fences dividing masters from slaves, men from women,
parents from children, property holders from the landless, and New Yorkers
from Rhode Islanders.3
This convoluted system of membership did not stop all attempts at gate-
keeping. Since the founding of the nation, nativist movements and immi-
EPILOGUE
237
gration laws had targeted small groups of Eu ro pe ans and Africans for ex-
clusion and expulsion. This regulation of migration was left primarily to the
states in the early nineteenth century. As an outgrowth of colonial poor laws,
states developed systems to exclude and remove paupers and other “undesir-
ables.” Often, these state regulations targeted aliens, but they also removed
citizens born in other states. In addition, southern states often regulated the
entry of free blacks ( whether or not they were born in Amer ica) in order to
preserve the institution of slavery. This produced a splintered system of state
gatekeeping, which policed the movement of aliens as well as that of citi-
zens, free blacks, and slaves.4
Other than the regulation of the slave trade, the only federal laws to re-
strict immigration before 1882 were the Alien Enemies and Alien Friends
Acts of 1798. The former affected enemy aliens solely during times of war,
but the latter allowed the federal government to expel any alien based on
suspicions of danger. Though a clear precursor to Chinese exclusion, the
highly controversial Alien Friends Act was never enforced, quickly expired,
and left little judicial trace.5 Other attempts to federalize border control were
blocked by southern statesmen. In order to preserve their ability to regulate
the movement of slaves and free blacks, southerners consistently fought fed-
eral intervention in matters of migration. Therefore, on the eve of the Civil
War, the United States lacked consolidated notions of citizenship, alienage,
and national gatekeeping.
The aftermath of the Civil War spurred dramatic changes in the regulation
of aliens and citizens in the United States. With the Thirteenth Amendment’s
emancipation of slaves in 1865 came the end of southern re sis tance to feder-
alized border control. No longer was there such a strong incentive for the
southern states to claim the power to regulate the movement of people. And
with the Fourteenth Amendment’s promise of equal protection in 1868 came
increased judicial scrutiny of state regulations. In the years following, judi-
cial decisions found that the states had little right to police the movement
of citizens and aliens. These legal and po liti cal shifts paved the way for the
federal government to take control of national gatekeeping.
The postbellum era also marked a transformation of U.S. citizenship. Not
only did Congress extend citizenship to more people, but it also imbued
the idea of citizenship with new meaning. For the first time, Congress
238
THE CHINESE MUST GO
defined a singular form of national citizenship, granted citizens certain rights
and immunities, and pledged federal protection of these civil rights. Con-
stitutional amendments did not bring actual equality in law or practice— sex,
race, class, and ability continued to influence one’s legal and social status— but
they provided the theoretical outlines of modern citizenship. To forever pro-
tect Americans from slavery or other abuses by the states, Congress enshrined
in the Constitution the rights- bearing citizen who lives on to this day.6
Once the federal government began to fashion the national citizenry, it
was only a matter of time until it defined who would stand outside those
ranks. The existence of the citizen demanded the concept of alien— and they
developed in tandem.7 Though national citizenship had begun taking shape
in the late 1860s, it was not immediately clear what alienage in modern Amer-
i ca would entail. Who would be considered an alien and for how long?
Which aliens would be allowed to enter the nation? What power did the
government hold to exclude and expel unwanted aliens? What rights did an
alien possess? Could unauthorized aliens claim those same rights? The Chi-
nese were not Amer ica’s first aliens, but Amer ica first drafted national an-