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by Beth Lew-Williams


  treaty stipulations relating to Chinese,’ ” (The Chinese Exclusion Act; The

  Scott Act) chap. 1064, 25 Stat. 504 (October 1, 1888). Cleveland also urged

  allocating funds to pay indemnity to the Chinese for vio lence in Wyoming

  Territory and the Pacific Northwest. S. Rep. No. 273, October 1, 1888. See

  also 19 Cong. Rec., 406, 412 (1888).

  55. “An Act making appropriations to supply deficiencies in the appropriations

  for the fiscal year ending June 13, 1888,” chap. 1210, 25 stat. 565 (October 19,

  1888). When Congress approved the indemnity it also made the first annual

  appropriation for exclusion, setting it at $50,000. “An Act making an

  appropriation for the enforcement of the Chinese Exclusion Act,” chap.

  1222, 25 Stat. 615 (October 19, 1888). Zhang Yinhaun to General

  Department, tele gram, December 27, 1888, pt. 3, item 33, vol. 2, ZS, 127.

  On sovereignty in immigration matters, see Mae M. Ngai, Impossible

  Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern Amer i ca (Prince ton, NJ:

  Prince ton University Press, 2005), 11; McKeown, Melancholy Order,

  177–179.

  56. LAT, October 1, 1888.

  57. As cited by McClain, In Search of Equality, 193; The Model Commonwealth

  [Seattle, WA] October 12, 1888; Grenville and Young, Politics, Strategy and

  American Diplomacy, 63.

  58. Harper’s Weekly, October 6, 1888; NYT, October 2, 1888. Scholars have

  argued that the bill was delayed too long in the Senate and handled too

  hesitantly by the White House and Cleveland at the polls. The Republican

  candidate, Benjamin Harrison, who also ran on an anti- Chinese platform,

  was elected the twenty- third president of the United States. Tsai, China

  and the Overseas Chinese, 93; Grenville and Young, Politics, Strategy and

  American Diplomacy, 63.

  59. Zhang Yinhuan to Imperial Court, memorial, March 30, 1889, pt. 3, item

  34, ZS, 127–134; Charles Denby, China and Her People, 2:100–101. Mary

  Roberts Coo lidge, Chinese Immigration (New York: Henry Holt, 1909),

  183, 207; Warren Cohen, Amer i ca’s Response to China: A History of

  Sino- American Relations, 5th ed. (New York: Columbia University Press,

  2010), 34.

  60. Charles Seymour to Charles Denby, March 20, 1889, USDS / DCO; LAT,

  October 27, 1888.

  61. Seymour to Denby, March 20, 1889; LAT, February 10, 1889; McKee,

  Chinese Exclusion versus the Open Door, 103–112; Charles Denby to Thomas

  316

  NOTES TO PAGES 191–193

  Bayard, December 1, 1888, doc. 88, American Diplomatic and Public Papers:

  The United States and China, series 2, vol. 13, 325.

  62. In 1894 the United States and China ratified the Gresham- Yang Treaty,

  which retroactively approved the exclusion acts of 1888 and 1892 (the Geary

  Act). But this treaty allowed for exclusion for a period of only ten years,

  so the exclusion acts of 1902 and 1904 were again passed in violation of

  U.S.- Chinese treaty stipulations. See Coo lidge, Chinese Immigration, 237;

  Paulsen, “The Gresham- Yang Treaty,” 281–297; George E. Paulsen, “The

  Abrogation of the Gresham- Yang Treaty,” Pacific Historical Review 40,

  no. 4 (1971), 457–477.

  63. Others have focused on these continued diplomatic concessions. See

  Paul A. Kramer, “Imperial Openings: Civilization, Exemption, and the

  Geopolitics of Mobility in the History of Chinese Exclusion, 1868–1910,”

  Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 14, no. 3 (July 2015): 317–347;

  Madeline Y. Hsu, The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril Became the

  Model Minority (Prince ton, NJ: Prince ton University Press, 2015), 11–17,

  39–54; Eric T. Love, Race over Empire: Racism and U.S. Imperialism,

  1865–1900 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004); McKee,

  Chinese Exclusion versus the Open Door Policy. This shifts dramatically in

  the twentieth century with the turn against formal empire; see Mary L.

  Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy

  (Prince ton, NJ: Prince ton University Press, 2000).

  64. Chae Chan Ping v. United States, 130 U.S. 581 (1889); Lucy E. Salyer, Laws

  Harsh as Tigers: Chinese Immigrants and the Shaping of Modern

  Immigration Law (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995),

  22.

  65. Chae Chan Ping v. United States.

  66. Ibid.; Kunal M. Parker, Making Foreigners: Immigration and Citizenship

  Law in Amer i ca, 1600–2000 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015),

  119; Meredith K. Olafson, “Note: The Concept of Limited Sovereignty and

  the Immigration Law Plenary Power Doctrine,” Georgetown Immigration

  Law Journal 13, no. 2 (Spring 1999): 433–453; Emer de Vattel, Law of

  Nations (London: G. G. and J. Robinson, 1797), 108; Ngai, Impossible

  Subjects, 11; McKeown, Melancholy Order, 177–179; McClain, In Search of Equality, 197; Gabriel Chin, “Segregation’s Last Stronghold: Race

  Discrimination and the Constitutional Law of Immigration,” UCLA Law

  Review 46, no. 1 (1998): 56, 58, 12; Natsu Taylor Saito, “The Enduring Effect

  of the Chinese Exclusion Cases: The ‘Plenary Power’ Justification for

  NOTES TO PAGES 193–197

  317

  On- Going Abuses of Human Rights,” Asian American Law Journal 10

  (May 2003): 13–17, 26–30; Gabriel Chin, “Is There a Plenary Power

  Doctrine? A Tentative Apology and Prediction for Our Strange but

  Unexceptional Constitutional Immigration Law,” Georgetown Immigration

  Law Journal 14 (2000): 257–287.

  67. For the evolution of the plenary power doctrine, see Natsu Taylor Saito,

  From Chinese Exclusion to Guantanamo Bay: Plenary Power and the

  Prerogative State (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2007), 5–6, 26–34;

  Sarah H. Cleveland, “Powers Inherent in Sovereignty: Indians, Aliens,

  Territories and the Nineteenth Century Origins of Plenary Power Over

  Foreign Affairs,” Texas Law Review 81, no. 1 (2002): 1–284. Though plenary

  power was fully articulated in the Chinese exclusion cases, there are

  antecedents in U.S. jurisprudence. See Johnson v. M’Intosh, 21 U.S. (8

  Wheat.) 589 (1823); United States v. Kagama, 118 U.S. 377 (1886).

  .

  7 AFTERLIVES UNDER EXCLUSION

  1. R. P. Scherwin to J. H. Rinder, February 15, 1904, private collection.

  2. Ibid.

  3.

  SFCH, April 20, 1904; LAT, July 30, 1904. Mary C. Greenfield,

  “Benevolent Desires and Dark Dominations: The Pacific Mail Steamship

  Com pany’s SS City of Peking and the United States in the Pacific 1874–

  1910,” Southern California Quarterly 94, no. 4 (2012): 423–478. The Pacific

  Mail Steamship Com pany had received intermittent federal subsidies since

  its inception in 1848.

  4. As quoted by Robert Eric Barde, Immigration at the Golden Gate: Passenger

  Ships, Exclusion, and Angel Island (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2008), 209–222.

  5. For example, see Lucy E. Salyer, Laws Harsh as Tigers: Chinese Immigrants

  and the Shaping of Modern Immigration Law (Chapel Hill: University of

  North Carolina Press, 1995); Daniel J. Trichenor, Dividing Lines: The

  Politics of Immigration Control in Amer i ca (Prince ton, NJ: Prince ton
/>
  University Press, 2002), 87–113; Daniel Kanstroom, Deportation Nation:

  Outsiders in American History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,

  2010), 95–130.

  6. W. H. Miller to William Windom, secretary of the trea sury, June 30, 1891,

  box 4, USCS / IE; James J. Brooks, special agent, to William Windom,

  March 4, 1890, box 4, USCS / IE. Kitty Calavita has noted an increase in

  authority of administrative officials in 1889. Kitty Calavita, “The Paradoxes

  318

  NOTES TO PAGES 197–199

  of Race, Class Identity, and ‘Passing’: Enforcing the Chinese Exclusion

  Act, 1882–1910,” Law and Social Inquiry 25, no. 1 (Winter 2000): 19.

  7. “Chinese Immigration,” H.R. Rep. No. 4048 at iii – iv (1891).

  8. Erika Lee, At Amer i ca’s Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion

  Era, 1882–1943 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003),

  153; McKeown, Melancholy Order, 144; Patrick Ettinger, Imaginary Lines:

  Border Enforcement and the Origins of Undocumented Immigration, 1882–

  1930 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009), 55–57; Elliott Young, Alien

  Nation: Chinese Migration in the Amer i cas from the Coolie Era through

  World War II (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014), 153,

  171–193.

  9. “Chinese Immigration,” H.R. Rep. No. 4048 at 18–22 (1891). For Chinese

  on Indian reservations, see Ettinger, Imaginary Lines, 54. There has been

  little work on Chinese– Native American liaisons in the nineteenth

  century. The existence of these relationships was noted in con temporary

  newspapers; see Daniel Liestman, “Horizontal Inter- Ethnic Relations:

  Chinese and American Indians in the Nineteenth- Century West,” Western

  Historical Quarterly 30, no. 3 (Autumn 1999): 327–349; Jordan Hua, “ ‘They

  Looked Askance’: American Indians and Chinese in the Nineteenth

  Century U.S. West” (honors thesis, Rutgers University, 2012).

  10. For “remote control,” see Aristide R. Zolberg, A Nation by Design:

  American Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of Amer i ca (Cambridge,

  MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 110–113.

  11. “Chinese Immigration,” H.R. Rep. No. 4048 at 140, 168 (1891). Historians’

  estimates have varied, as have their sources of information, but most also

  fall within this range. Ettinger, Imaginary Lines, 49; Young, Alien Nation,

  160–161; Lee, At Amer i ca’s Gates, 135.

  12. “Chinese Immigration,” H.R. Rep. No. 4048 at 24–25, 65 (1891); Adam M.

  McKeown, Melancholy Order: Asian Migration and the Globalization of

  Borders (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008) , 217–238.

  13. “Chinese Immigration,” H.R. Rep. No. 4048 at 515, 546, ii (1891);

  W. H. Miller to William Windom, June 30, 1891; George H. Hopkins to

  O. L. Spaul ding, June 27, 1891, box 4, USCS / IE. On the history of

  deportation, see Daniel Kanstroom, Deportation Nation.

  14. W. H. Miller to William Windom, draft, April 1890, box 4, USCS / IE;

  O. L. Spaul ding to C. W. Bradshaw, April 1890, box 4, USCS / IE; Thomas R.

  Brown to C. W. Bradshaw, May 16, 1890, box 4, USCS / IE; O. L. Spaul-

  ding to C. W. Bradshaw, draft, May 1890, box 4, USCS / IE.

  NOTES TO PAGES 199–202

  319

  15. Kanstroom, Deportation Nation.

  16. “Chinese Immigration,” H.R. Rep. No. 4048 at 273, 333, 271, 494 (1891).

  17. Calavita, “The Paradoxes of Race,” 1–40; Anna Pegler- Gordon, “Chinese

  Exclusion, Photography, and the Development of U.S. Immigration

  Policy,” American Quarterly 58, no. 1 (March 2006): 51–77.

  18. Chinese Immigration,” H.R. Rep. No. 4048 at 273 (1891); Judy Yung,

  Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco

  (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 293; Salyer, Laws Harsh as

  Tigers, 150–151, 210.

  19. “Chinese Immigration,” H.R. Rep. No. 4048 at 406–407 (1891).

  20. Ibid. at ii, 518, 544. Young, Alien Nation, 158–159; Ettinger, Imaginary Lines, 56; “Chinese Immigration,” H.R. Rep. No. 4048 at 515, 546, ii (1891);

  Grace Peña Delgado, Making the Chinese Mexican: Global Migration,

  Localism, and Exclusion in the U.S.- Mexico Borderlands (Stanford, CA:

  Stanford University Press, 2012), 13–40, 73–103; Lee, At Amer i ca’s Gates,

  157–173, 179–187; Young, Alien Nation, 171–193.

  21. W. H. Miller to William Windom, June 30, 1891, box 4, USCS / IE. Based

  on data collected by the author from the following sources: For 1851–1882,

  see Mary Roberts Coo lidge, Chinese Immigration (New York: Henry Holt,

  1909), 498; Trea sury Department, “Letter from the Secretary of the

  Trea sury . . . statement of arrivals of Chinese at the port of San Francisco,”

  51st Cong., 1st sess., Ex. Doc. 97 (April 12, 1890) and Commissioner

  General of Immigration, Annual Report of the Commissioner General of

  Immigration for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1903 (Washington, DC:

  Government Printing Office, 1903), 34–37, 110–111; Bureau of Statistics,

  Annual Report and Statements of the Chief of the Bureau of Statistics on the

  Foreign Commerce, Navigation, Immigration and Tonnage of the U.S. for the

  year ending June 30, 1892, 52d Cong., 2d Sess., 3102 Ex. Doc. 6

  (November 29, 1892); Trea sury Department, Immigration and Passenger

  Movement at Ports of the United States during the year ending June 30, 1894,

  53rd Cong., 3rd Sess., 3317 H.R. Ex. Doc. 6 (January 2, 1895). These figures

  do not include Chinese mi grants who were in transit to other countries.

  22. Lee, At Amer i ca’s Gate, 153, 238; McKeown, Melancholy Order, 144;

  Ettinger, Imaginary Lines, 55–57.

  23. Kenneth Chew, Mark Leach, and John M. Liu, “The Revolving Door to

  Gold Mountain: How Chinese Immigrants Got around U.S. Exclusion

  and Replenished the Chinese American Labor Pool, 1900–1910,”

  International Migration Review 43, no. 2 (2009): 410–430.

  320

  NOTES TO PAGES 202–204

  24. “Chinese Immigration,” H.R. Rep. No. 4048 at 493–495 (1891).

  25. Martin Gold, Forbidden Citizens: Chinese Exclusion and the U.S. Congress:

  A Legislative History (Alexandria, VA: The Capitol.Net, 2012), 282–283.

  26. John Sherman as quoted in Coo lidge, Chinese Immigration, 215; 23 Cong.

  Rec. 2912, 2915 (1892).

  27. House 186 to 27, Senate 30 to 15. Coo lidge, Chinese Immigration, 215–216.

  28. “An act to prohibit the coming of Chinese persons into the United States”

  (The Geary Act), chap. 60, 27 Stat. 25 (May 5, 1892).

  29. Ibid.; “An Act to amend an act entitled ‘An act to prohibit the coming of

  Chinese persons into the United States’ ” (McCreary Amendment), chap.

  14, 28 Stat. 7 (November 3, 1893); Wong Wing v. United States, 163 U.S.

  228 (1896). The ruling against punitive imprisonment still allowed for

  immigrant detention, see Hernandez, City of Inmates, 89. For previous

  experiments with denial of bail, see “Chinese Immigration,” H.R. Rep.

  No. 4048 at 348–350 (1891). For shifting definitions of exempt class, see

  Calavita, “The Paradoxes of Race,” 16. For previous expectations of

  affirmative proof, see George H. Hopkins to O. L. Spaul ding, June 27,

>   1891, box 4, USCS / IE. For incidental use of registration, see A. L. Blake to

  A. W. Bash, September 1, 1882, box 111, file 2, RG36, USCS / CM; Charles J.

  McClain, In Search of Equality: The Chinese Strug gle against Discrimination

  in Nineteenth- Century Amer i ca (Berkeley: University of California Press,

  1994), 348n61; Commissioner- General of Immigration, Annual Report of the

  Commissioner- General of Immigration, 34–37. For California’s previous

  attempt to register the Chinese, see Hudson N. Janisch, “The Chinese, the

  Courts and the Constitution: A Study of the Legal Issues Raised by

  Chinese Immigration to the United States, 1850–1902” (JSD diss.,

  University of Chicago Law School, 1971), 950; SFCA, April 27, 1892.

  30. For previous forms of Chinese re sis tance, see Janisch, “The Chinese, the

  Courts, and the Constitution,” 353, 529.

  31. For previous use of passports, see McKeown, Melancholy Order, 41–42,

  102–107; Craig Robertson, The Passport in Amer i ca: The History of a

  Document (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); Daily Morning Call,

  September 20, 1892. See also “Memorial from Yang Ru to Imperial Court,”

  May 5, 1894, pt. 3, item 39, ZS, 139–142.

  32. Janisch, “The Chinese, the Courts, and the Constitution,” 975; SDRU,

  May 5, 1893; Salyer, Laws Harsh as Tigers, 55.

  33. Fong Yue Ting v. United States, 149 U.S. 698 (1893); Chae Chan Ping v.

  United States, 130 U.S. 581 (1889); Salyer, Laws Harsh as Tigers, 52.

  NOTES TO PAGES 204–208

  321

  34. McClain, In Search of Equality, 201–211; Salyer, Laws Harsh as Tigers,

  46–58; Jean Pfaelzer, Driven Out: The Forgotten War against Chinese

  Americans (New York: Random House, 2007), 300–301.

  35. 53d Cong. 1st Sess., S. Doc. no. 13, “Letter from the Secretary of the

  Trea sury in answer to a resolution of the senate . . . September 12, 1893”; as

  quoted by Janisch, “The Chinese, the Courts, and the Constitution,” 985.

  36. SFCA, August 23, 1893; Pfaelzer, Driven Out, 318–327; Yucheng Qin, The Diplomacy of Nationalism: The Six Companies and China’s Policy toward

  Exclusion (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2009), 122.

  37. Sausalito News, August 25, 1893; Janisch, “The Chinese, the Courts, and the

  Constitution,” 993; LAH, September 3, 5, 27, 1893; SFCA, September 3,

  1893; Pfaelzer, Driven Out, 307–313; Salyer, Laws Harsh as Tigers, 55–56;

 

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