April 19, 2021 • 42 mins
The Chinese Exclusion Act was the United States’ first major immigration law, and as its name suggests it specifically targeted people from China. It led to Supreme Court cases that set the stage for later restrictions.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. We've gotten
several requests to do an episode on the Chinese Exclusion
Act of eighteen eighty two, and that's something that we've
(00:24):
mentioned and I feel like a lot of previous episodes,
and it's gotten a longer discussion in some specific episodes
like the Delano Grape Strike and Cannery Row and our
Brief History of Foreign Foods in the US, and then
especially our two parter on Executive Order ninety six in
the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War Two.
(00:46):
So the Chinese Exclusion Act was really the first big
piece in just a long history of United States immigration
laws intended to keep so called undesirables out of the
country and to make contained white racial purity. It was
the United States first major immigration law, and as its
name suggests, its specifically targeted people from China. It made
(01:10):
it illegal for Chinese laborers to enter the US for
ten years, and then it was extended under the Geary
Act in eighteen ninety two and then made permanent in
nineteen o two. It wasn't repealed until nineteen forty three.
That was under the Magnus In Act, although that act
also set a quota on Chinese immigration that worked out
to a maximum of just about a hundred and five
(01:32):
people a year, so not many at all. But the
Chinese Exclusion Act also had a much broader impact beyond
its exclusion of Chinese immigrants and beyond its setting the
foundation for later laws that targeted other groups. When it
was challenged before the Supreme Court, the court's decisions established
(01:52):
what's known as the plenary power doctrine for immigration law. Basically,
that's the idea that the US government's legislative in a
executive branches have virtually unlimited authority to regulate immigration without
a lot of oversight from the courts, even if those
same regulations would be considered discriminatory if they were applied
to U. S citizens. So today we are going to
(02:15):
talk about the Chinese Exclusion Act. We're also going to
talk about the Supreme Court case that's most closely associated
with all this, and that is Chan Ping versus the
United States. For the most part, immigration in the US
from China started after the end of the First Opium War. Briefly,
Britain wanted to import Chinese goods like tea and silk,
(02:38):
but China didn't really have a need for Britain's usual exports,
so to offset that imbalance, Britain started trading opium from
India into Southern China. Opium, of course, is a highly
addictive narcotic, and although it had been introduced into China
before this point, the British opium trade was socially and
economically devastating. The Emperor started issuing edicts against opium in
(03:03):
seventeen twenty nine, but Britain kept exporting it into China
in defiance of Chinese law. Eventually, China destroyed a shipment
of British opium by throwing it into the sea, and
Britain retaliated with force. The resulting war lasted from eighteen
thirty nine to eighteen forty two, and it ended with
the Treaty of Nanjing, which heavily favored British interests. Although
(03:26):
the US had also been involved in the opium trade,
it wasn't one of the belligerents in this war, so
it was not a party to the Treaty of Nanjing.
But the US did want access to the same trading
ports and other concessions that Britain had secured through that treaty,
so US President John Tyler sent a delegation to China
in eighteen forty four, and the result was the Treaty
(03:49):
of Wan Chia, which was described as a Treaty of quote, Peace, Amity,
and Commerce. It called for a quote perfect, permanent and
universal peace and a sincere cordial amity between the US
and China. It was the first diplomatic agreement between the
U s and China, and although it primarily covered US
trading rights with China, it also established the right for
(04:12):
Americans to live in five specific Chinese ports. The Treaties
of Nanjing and Quanxia are two of the unequal treaties
that China signed with other nations in the nineteenth and
early twentie centuries. These treaties heavily favored the interests of
other nations over those of China. China had strictly limited
(04:32):
its trade and its contact with other nations before this point,
and so it went through just massive and tumultuous social
and economic changes as a result of these treaties and
the concessions that they granted to other nations. On top
of that, the Taiping Rebellion was partially fueled by this
upheaval and dissatisfaction over these new foreign influences in China.
(04:56):
It started in eighteen fifty and led to the deaths
of more than twenty milli in people. Then, unresolved issues
from the First Opium War fed into the Second Opium
War that started in eighteen fifty six. There were massive
floods and famines in China in the mid nineteenth century
as well. In the wake of all this violence and
chaos and destruction, people understandably started emigrating from China to
(05:20):
other countries, and while some people were able to pay
their own way, others were essentially indentured workers or in
some cases were the victims of trafficking. During these same years,
the United States needed a new source for laborers, especially
in California. The US took possession of nearly all of
what is now California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico
(05:44):
after the end of the Mexican American War in eighteen
forty eight. That same year, the discovery of gold launched
the California gold Rush, So the US needed people to
farm this newly acquired land, to mine gold, to build infrastructure.
Just on an on they needed people. Yeah, and just
from a practical but also unpleasant level, people were going
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to have to come from somewhere else. The indigenous population
of California is estimated to have been at about a
hundred and fifty thousand people at the end of the
Mexican American War, and they faced disease, the loss of land,
and genocide at the hands of white settlers in the
California government over the following decades. And although some newcomers
(06:27):
to California did bring their enslaved workforces with them, when
California was admitted to the Union in eighteen fifty, it
was as a free state, so the United States was
just needing to bring in workers from some other source.
One of the people proposing that these new laborers come
from China was Aaron Hate Palmer. His memoir Geographical, Political
(06:50):
and Commercial on the present state, productive resources and Capabilities
for commerce of Siberia, Manchuria, and the Asiatic Islands of
the Northern Pacific Ocean, and on the importance of opening
commercial intercourse with those countries. We Love. A long title
uh that book was addressed to President James K. Polk
In in addition to summarizing quote, the present state, productive
(07:14):
resources and capabilities for commerce of several comparatively unknown countries
in the East. The eighth chapter of this work was
titled Quote Policy of Encouraging Immigration of Chinese Agricultural Laborers
to California semi colon Railroad from the Mississippi to the
Bay of San Francisco. This chapter began quote with the
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view of bringing the fertile lands in California under early cultivation.
I would suggest the policy of encouraging immigration of agricultural
laborers from China to that territory. No people in all
the East are so well adapted for clearing wild lands
and raising every species of agricultural product, especially rice, cotton, tobacco, sugar,
(07:58):
and silk. As the Chinese palmer goes on to describe
how a colony of Chinese laborers in California would also
bring in trade from China and from other parts of Asia.
He also advocates the construction of a railroad connecting the
Mississippi River to San Francisco, which would connect the Eastern
US to the West coast for trade with Asia. The
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United States would undertake such a railroad under the Pacific
Railway Act, which was signed into law in eighteen sixty two.
As a side note here, Palmer would also go on
to draft such documents as Plan for Opening Japan, which
formed the foundation for commodore Matthew Perry's voyage to open
Japan to Western trade by force. Palmer petitioned Congress for
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compensation and recognition for his work. He was apparently very
annoyed that he had not been recognized or paid for
all of this. That led to an Act for the
Relief of Arin H. Palmer in eighteen sixty one, and
under that Act he was paid three thousand dollars. In
the wake of all this, the number of Chinese people
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living in the US rose dramatically. In eighteen forty, there
were four people of Chinese origin known to be living
in the United States. In eighteen fifty there were just
over four thousand, but by eighteen sixty that number had
grown to almost thirty five thousand. That's a big number,
and it sounds like a huge increase and it is,
but it's still tiny compared to the total US population
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of thirty one million people at the time. So at
the national level, looking at things from the federal government's perspective,
these were desperately needed, relatively inexpensive workers who were doing
critical manual labor. Some of that labor was incredibly difficult, unpleasant,
and dangerous. That was especially true as Chinese workers started
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building the Transcontinental Railroad. They made up between eighty and
ninety percent of the workforce on the railroad's western portion.
But locally, white people in the Western US, especially in California,
saw Chinese immigrants as a threat. This was especially true
during the Gold Rush, as white miners tried to exclude
(10:06):
Chinese people from mining camps and prevent Chinese people from
staking claims. Basically, as soon as Chinese immigrants started branching
out beyond doing manual labor, white people resisted. We will
get into more about that. After a quick sponsor break
(10:30):
during the eighteen fifties and sixties, the state of California
started really trying to discourage immigration from China and to
place restrictions on Chinese people who were already in the state.
In eighteen fifty four, the California Supreme Court issued its
decision in People Versus Hall, which ruled that Chinese people
could not testify against white people in court. The language
(10:54):
of the court's ruling was explicitly racist, including describing Chinese
people as inferior. In eighteen fifty eight, California passed a
law that barred Chinese and Mongolian people from entering the state.
Were generally they were also just the same kinds of
discriminatory segregation laws that we've seen in other contexts, and
laws that were just applied only to the Chinese population
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and not to everyone else. At the same time, the
United States was signing new treaties with China. In eighteen
fifty eight, the U s and China signed the Treaty
of chian Jin, which supplemented and revised the Treaty of
One Chia. The Treaty of Tianjin again emphasized this idea
of establishing a quote firm, lasting and sincere friendship between
(11:38):
the two nations. The Treaties of Tianjin and Wan Chia
both outlined various rights and protections for American citizens who
were living in China, but they didn't really do the
same for Chinese citizens who were living in the United
States or really mentioned Chinese immigration to the US at all.
That changed with the Ling Games Seward Treaty of eighteen
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sixty eight that was named for US Minister to China
Anthon Berlin Game, who had started working directly for the
Chinese government, and for Secretary of State William Seward. In
addition to again reiterating and expanding American trading rights with China,
this treaty also specified that both Chinese and American citizens
had a quote inherent and unalienable right to change their
(12:25):
home and allegiance. In other words, Americans could immigrate to
China and Chinese people could immigrate to the US without restriction.
At the same time, quote nothing herein contained shall be
held to confer naturalization upon citizens of the US in China,
nor upon the subjects of China in the United States.
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U s citizens could also enjoy all the privileges of
a public education under control of the Chinese government, and
Chinese citizens could do the same in the US. Chinese
and American citizens were each allowed to establish their own
schools in the other country as well. But even as
the federal government was establishing this pretty unrestricted right to
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immigrate between China and the United States, discrimination against Chinese
people already in the United States was really increasing. The
same types of racist stereotyping that had been used to
justify slavery was used to justify discrimination and violence against
Chinese immigrants. Chinese men were described as being useful only
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for manual labor, while Chinese women were cast as sex workers.
Compounding all of this were perceptions that Chinese people would
work for such low wages that they made it impossible
for white people to compete. Employers also started bringing in
Chinese workers to break strikes, and that drew the ire
of the workers they were replacing and the unions that
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represented them. And the language used to describe Chinese workers
often carried a connotation of damage and destruction. These immigrants
were described as an invasion, or a flood, or a deluge,
or even a plague of locusts. The idea was that
once the railroad was finished, or the mine was played out,
or the crop was brought in, then these workers would
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swarm into another area and destroy everything in their path.
This was worsened by the Panic of eighteen seventy three,
which kicked off a financial depression and also led to
increased competition for fewer and fewer jobs. White communities and
business leaders along the West Coast, especially in California, started
pressing the federal government to take action against this supposed
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Chinese threat. In eighteen seventy five, less than a decade
after signing the Berlin Game Treaty, the federal government responded
to this with the Page Act. The Page Act barred
US citizens from bringing quote any subject of China, Japan,
or any Oriental country into the US without their free
and voluntary consent. In other words, it banned are Ricans
(15:00):
from bringing indentured or otherwise unfree workers to the US
from these countries. Section three of the Page Act also
began quote The importation into the United States of women
for the purposes of prostitution is hereby forbidden, and it
empowered port collectors to inspect vessels and their passengers to
confirm that this law was being followed. The Page Act
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essentially assumed that Asian women immigrating to the US were
sex workers, and it subjected them to degrading and humiliating
exams and interrogations upon arrival. Before this point, Chinese immigrants
to the US had been predominantly male, since so many
were being contracted to work as manual laborers, but the
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Page Act became an even bigger deterrent for women, and
it reinforced stereotypes that connected Asian women to sex work.
Combined with a rise and anti missagination laws which made
it illegal for people of different races to marry, this
meant that the vast majority of Chinese people in the
US were single men or men whose families are back
(16:06):
in China. Was basically a deterrent to forming actual families
and communities here in the US. We talked about some
similar stuff in our Delano grape strike episode with Filipino
workers who were not permitted to have wives or to
bring their wives from the Philippines. Eighteen seventy five was
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also the year that Chai chan Ping arrived in the
US to work, and he worked in the United States
for the next twelve years, and during those years, the
US continued to pass new restrictions on immigration from China
and other parts of Asia, and on Chinese immigrants already
in the country. California adopted a new state constitution in
(16:48):
eighteen seventy nine, which included Article nineteen. It was simply
called Chinese. Section two of this article began quote no
corporation now existing or hereafter. Four under the laws of
this State, shall, after the adoption of this Constitution, employed,
directly or indirectly, in any capacity, any Chinese or Mongolian.
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Section three reads, in its entirety quote, no Chinese shall
be employed on any state, county, municipal, or other public work,
except in punishment for crime. Also in eighteen seventy nine,
the US Senate and House passed a bill that mandated
that ships arriving in the United States could carry no
more than fifteen Chinese workers. President Rutherford B. Hayes vetoed
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this bill because it conflicted with the treaties in place
with China, including the Berlin Game Treaty, but then to
address that, he sent a commission to China, headed by
diplomat James Angel, to negotiate a new treaty, and the
result of that negotiation was the Angel Treaty, signed in
eighteen eighty. The Angel Treaty was written to apply only
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to laborers, although the deaf nition of laborer expanded over time.
It read, in part quote, whenever, in the opinion of
the Government of the United States, the coming of Chinese
laborers to the United States or their residents therein effects
or threatens to affect the interests of that country, or
to endanger the good order of the said country, or
(18:19):
of any locality within the territory thereof the Government of
China agrees that the Government of the United States may regulate, limit,
or suspend such coming or residents, but may not absolutely prohibited.
This treaty's second article declared that quote Chinese subjects, whether
proceeding to the United States as teachers, students, merchants, or
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from curiosity, together with their body and household servants and
Chinese laborers who are now in the United States, shall
be allowed to go and come of their own free
will and accord, and shall be accorded all the rights, privileges, immunities,
and exemptions which are a cord to the citizens and
subjects of the most favored Nation. However, just two years
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after signing the Angel Treaty, the United States passed the
Chinese Exclusion Act, or, as it was formerly known, an
Act to execute certain treaty stipulations relating to Chinese. It
banned Chinese laborers from coming to the US for ten years,
and it defined laborers as quote both skilled and unskilled
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laborers and Chinese employed in mining, and it also included
this clause, no state court or court of the United
States shall admit Chinese to citizenship. Now, you could make
the argument that because this applied only to laborers, it
was not absolutely prohibiting people from coming from China to
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the United States, which is like the Angel Treaty had
said that the U s could limit but not absolutely prohibit.
That's still kind of like, well, technically level of argument.
This act did not apply to Chinese people who were
already in the US before the Angel Treaty was signed,
or to people who arrived within ninety days of the
(20:10):
passage of the Exclusion Act, at least in terms of
the ability to come and go. The the fact that
they then could not become citizens that applied to everyone.
And this established a process to take place at American
ports which would document the right of these people who
you know, were exempt under this part of the treaty
to come and go. The Customs collector would document all
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Chinese passengers on departing vessels, and then these passengers were
entitled to receive a certificate that would quote entitled the
Chinese laborer to whom the same is issued to return
to and re enter the United States upon producing and
delivering the same to the Collector of Customs of the
district that which such Chinese labor shall seek to re enter.
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So basically, if you were already here, you were supposed
to be able to come and go. You could return
to China or go somewhere else, and they come back
into the United States. In practice, this act banned virtually
all immigration to the US from China, and it also
sparked a massive amount of horrific anti Chinese violence in
the US. There had been mass anti Chinese violence before
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this point. As one example, on October seventy one, a
white man was killed during a shootout involving several Chinese men,
and in retaliation, a white mob attacked the Chinese community
of Los Angeles, lynching at least seventeen people. But after
the Exclusion Act was passed, white communities on the West
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Coast felt empowered to purge their Chinese populations, and they
subjected Chinese neighborhoods to riots and other mass violence. Multiple
cities and towns expelled their entire Chinese population, including Tacoma, Washington,
which fourth marched its remaining Chinese residents out of town.
On November three. At least Chinese men were massacred in
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Rock Springs, Wyoming on September thirty. This whole period came
to be known as the Driving Out, and it really
had a lot of similarities to the mass violence against
black communities that we've talked about in previous episodes, including
our episode on the Red Summer of nineteen. There was
a widespread perception outside of the Chinese community that Chinese
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immigrants were ignorant and illiterate, but really the Chinese immigrant
community in the US was deeply interconnected, organized, and legally
very savvy. Chinese benevolent and mutual aid associations had started
to form in the US almost as soon as Chinese
immigrants had started arriving. In eighteen eighty two, the Six
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most Powerful formed the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, also known
as the Chinese Six Companies. Its leadership included Chinese merchants
and other wealthy and prominent people, and it kept attorney
is on a retainer to deal with legal issues that
involved Chinese immigrants, so did the Chinese Consulate. This led
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to a huge number of court cases as people started
arriving from China into the United States without that certificate
that was described under the Chinese Exclusion Act that would
guarantee them the right to return. In some cases, this
was because they were really new arrivals. They hadn't been
in the United States before. But there were plenty of
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reasons that people might really be returning to the US
having left previously, but without the right paperwork to prove
that they had previously been in the country. They could
have left the United States before the Exclusion Act was passed,
at which point no such certificates are being issued, or
they just might not have been issued. One fact said
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that they were entitled to it, not that they were
guaranteed to receive it. This caused problems at the ports,
as officials had to work out whether people really were
legally allowed to enter the US. These cases often wound
up in courts. The collector of the Port of San
Francisco claimed that of the more than twenty Chinese people
allowed into the US in the first fourteen months after
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the Act was signed, more than a third of them
had come through the courts without a re entry certificate.
This was a big deal. On January four, Judge Ogden
Hoffman of the U S District Court for the Northern
District of California included this statement in his ruling on
one of these cases. Quote, if the Chinese immigrants come
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in the future and anything like the number in which
they have recently arrived, it will be impossible for the
courts to fulfill their ordinary functions. There remain on the
calendar of the District Court. I am informed a hundred
and ninety cases for five or six weeks, even with
night sessions, I have been unable to make any great
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impression on them. All ordinary business, public and private of
the court is necessary airily suspended or if resumed. These passengers,
many of who may be entitled to their discharge, are
left either in custody or on bail, awaiting the determination
of their cases. It is therefore an urgent necessity that Congress,
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by committing that duty to commissioners, or by some other mode,
should relieve the courts of the burden of passing on
these cases. To close these legal loopholes. On July three,
eighty four, the U. S Government broadened the Chinese Exclusion Act,
making those re entry certificates issued at port the only
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evidence that could establish a person's right to re enter
the United States, but this expansion didn't make any provision
for people who had left the US before it was passed.
This led to a Supreme Court case involving Chu Chung,
who had left the US for Hawaii in eighteen eighty
one and had tried to return to the U s
in eighteen eighty four. In this case, Young was a
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allowed to enter the US because the Court found that
the law had not intended to strip people of rights
they had previously had under the treaty, which included being
able to come and go. Justice Stephen Field, who will
come up again, dissented with this ruling, arguing that it
was quote holy immaterial to inquire whether by the act
assailed it has departed from the Treaty or not, or
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whether such departure was accidental or designed, and if the latter,
whether the reasons therefore were good or bad. During the
World arguments, Field had also said, quote Congress never supposed
that Chinaman intended to go back to China and stay
several years. If they do not come back at once,
they should not be allowed to come at all. We're
going to get into Cha Chung Ping's case after we
(26:45):
pause for a sponsor break As we said earlier, Cha
chan Ping traveled into the United States from China in
eighteen eighty seven, and he worked in the US for
the next twelve years. Beyond that, we don't know a
lot about him. I have a lot of unanswered questions,
(27:08):
specifically about his name, Like I don't know how his
name was written in Chinese characters and how that was romanized,
because the romanization methods that exist today, like had not
really been developed yet when he immigrated. There are just uh,
some question marks about how he would have written or
said his own name. On June two, eight seven, he
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set sail for China aboard the steamship Gaelic for a visit.
Before the ship left the port, he got the required
certificate that would allow him to re enter the United
States when he got back. On September seven, eight he
set sail from Hong Kong aboard the Belgic that was
a British vessel that was under charter to an American
(27:52):
company and it was bound for San Francisco. The Supreme
Court's decision in his case says that he arrived in
San franci Let's go on October eight, but newspaper reports
about the vessel's arrivals say that it was on the seventh. However,
on October one, while he was still in transit, President
(28:12):
Grover Cleveland signed the Scott Act into law, and the
Scott Act barred re entry for Chinese immigrants to the US,
no matter when they first arrived in or how long
they had lived in the country. The US and China
had been working on yet another treaty. This time, China
had proposed that it curtail immigration to the US with
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the hopes that it would ultimately protect its citizens who
were in the United States, but the resulting treaty banned
immigration to the US for twenty years and the return
of Chinese workers to the US. This led to a
huge outcry, and China refused to ratify the treaty, so
the US acted unilaterally and put the same basic provisions
(28:54):
in place with the Scott Act. Yeah, at this point,
China really had no confidence that the United States was
willing or able to protect Chinese citizens who were living
on American soil. The Scott Act made that re entry
certificate that Chai Chomping had obtained before leaving the United
States invalid, and he was not at all unique in
(29:17):
this situation. Even though only a few of these cases
made it all the way to the Supreme Court. It's
estimated that the Scott Act invalidated the re entry permits
of as many as twenty thousand Chinese people, and that
as many as six hundred of them were in transit
to the United States when it was passed. Just in
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terms of the passengers aboard the Belgic, there were a
hundred and seventy six people from China, all of whom
were kept there confined to the ship underguard by port officials.
Attorneys began filing petitions on behalf of those one seventy
six people, some of them arguing that they had technically
been under U s jurisdiction before the Scott Act was signed,
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since the Jake was operating under an American charter. A
petition for Chai chan Ping was filed on October tenth,
and he was issued a writ of habeas corpus. Chai
chan Ping's hearing was before the Circuit Court of the
United States for the Northern District of California, and the
judge ruled that his detention aboard the Belgic was legal
(30:20):
because of the Scott Act. He had no legal rights
to enter the United States anymore, but his attorneys argued
that this was in violation of existing treaties between the
United States and China, including the Berlin Game Treaty. His
appeal went to the Supreme Court, where it was argued
on March twenty nine, eighteen eighty nine. The fourteenth Amendment
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to the U s Constitution is worded as applying to persons,
not citizens, so a person cannot be deprived of life, liberty,
or property without due process of law. Chai Chang Ping's
attorneys made an argument that his right to re enter
the US was effectively property and that he could not
be stripped of it with out due process. They also
(31:02):
reiterated the idea that his exclusion from the US ran
against existing treaties with China. However, the Supreme Court was
unanimous in its decision, which was issued on May thirte
that Cha Chan Ping did not have the right to
re enter the United States, regardless of what the treaties
in place between the US and China actually said in
(31:24):
terms of federal laws and international treaties. The court rule
that neither of them had automatic precedence over the other,
so whichever one was the most recent, was the one
that applied to the situation, but the court also went
way beyond answering just this one specific question. Stephen Johnson Field,
writing for the majority, wrote, quote, to preserve its independence
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and give security against foreign aggression and encroachment is the
highest duty of every nation, and to attain these ends,
nearly all other considerations are to be subordinated. It matters
not in what for such aggression and encroachment come, whether
from the foreign nation acting in its national character, or
from vast hordes of its people crowding in upon us.
(32:10):
The court's opinion was also pretty broad and how it
approached the idea of race and assimilation. Quote. If therefore,
the Government of the United States, through its Legislative Department,
considers the presence of foreigners of a different race in
this country who will not assimilate with us to be
dangerous to its peace and security, their exclusion is not
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to be stayed because at the time there are no
actual hostilities with the nation of which the foreigners are subjects.
This opinion also framed restrictions on immigration, even if discriminatory,
as a fundamental part of a nation's sovereignty. Quote. The
power of exclusion of foreigners, being an incident of sovereignty
(32:54):
belonging to the government of the United States as a
part of those sovereign powers delegated by the Institution, the
right to its exercise at any time when in the
judgment of the government, the interests of the country require.
It cannot be granted away or restrained on behalf of anyone. Today,
Champing versus the United States is often referred to as
(33:17):
the Chinese Exclusion case, although sometimes it's also grouped in
with three later cases and they become the Chinese Exclusion
Cases together as a group, And although these decisions have
been highly criticized, especially in recent years, they have never
been overturned. As we said at the top of the show.
Together they have formed the foundation for the plenary power doctrine.
(33:40):
In the context of United States immigration law. Basically, people
trying to enter the US aren't citizens, so constitutional protections
against discrimination don't apply to them. And although persons already
in the United States are covered under parts of the
Fourteenth Amendment, specifically the Guarantee of Due Process, persons not
(34:02):
already in the United States really aren't. So through these rulings,
the Supreme Court took a position that the President and
Congress are responsible for immigration law, not the courts, and
not without much court oversight. As for John Ping, we
know he was forced to go back to China, but
that didn't happen for a few more months. His case
(34:24):
had become national news thanks to its potential impact on
the Chinese Exclusion Act, and for weeks after the Supreme
Court issued its ruling, there were headlines claiming that no
one knew where he was. On June, one of his
attorneys gave a statement to the San Francisco Examiner that
he would let the Federal Marshal know when his client
was ready to set sail, and that it wasn't unusual
(34:45):
for it to take up to thirty days for a
person to get their affairs in order and be ready
to leave, even though he was essentially being deported at
this point. Like none of the language around this case
is framed as deportation. It's it's framed as excluding him
from entering the US, even though he had been released
on bond and was already in the US. In August
(35:07):
of eighteen eighty nine, his bondsman agreed to bring him
to the port to board the Arabic, which was scheduled
to depart for China on the twenty two of that month.
It seems to have actually set sail a few days
after that, according to a write up in The New
York Times, which is really insulting in its tone. So
I kind of take this with a grain of salt.
(35:27):
He refused to pay for his passage because he did
not want to leave the United States in the first place.
There were people who came to the US from China
while the Chinese Exclusion Act was enforced. This was particularly
true after the nineteen o six earthquake and fire destroyed
most of San Francisco's public records, so people forged documents
to claim that they had been born in the US
(35:48):
or that they were related to U. S citizens. People
who entered the US through this kind of forged paperwork
became known as paper sons. So it's possible that Chai
chanping return learned to the US, but it is assumed
that he spent the rest of his life in China. Okay,
we don't really know a lot about what happened to
him after this point. We don't know a lot about
(36:09):
him as a person in general. Uh, but we do
know that his case had just a monumental influence on
how the courts have continued to view immigration law in
the United States, and by extension, like how lawmakers make
immigration policy, knowing that the plinary power doctor and is
the long standing precedent at this point, Uh, I have
(36:33):
listener mail. Oh, I was gonna ask you for it,
but you got it. Yes, about something completely different. It's
from Erica and it is titled a Scurvy Story. I
I wanted something a little lighter to take us out,
and this is a a lighter a lighter side of
scurvy Erica, says Hi Holly and Tracy. I just listened
(36:55):
to your episode on scurvy. I missed a few weeks
of podcast around the holidays, and I'm finally catching up
and wanted to share a third hand story with you both.
I graduated with my master's in public health last spring,
and of course, during the MPH program, when we start
learning about randomized controlled trials, we start with James Lynde
and his work identifying a cure for scurvy, and teaching
(37:17):
about this story and its implications for public health. My
professor mentioned his college roommate who prescribed fully to the
classic college student diet of ramen and coffee. During their
first semester at school, the roommate began to feel unwell, fatigue,
body aches, generalized weakness, etcetera. He eventually went to see
a doctor who told him that his all instant ramen
(37:40):
diet had him in the early stages of scurvy. The
doctor sent him off with instructions to eat a flipping
fruit every once in a while. I'm paraphrasing here, and
he quickly recovered. As a fairly recent college graduate, myself,
remembering the story never fails to make me laugh and
inspire me to pick up an orange. Thank you so
much for all that you do. I now work and
(38:01):
an Apartment of Health as part of the COVID Response unit,
and I appreciate your mix of topics this year. I
always have the choice whether I want to distract myself
from public health or learn more about it. I especially
love the scurvy episode and the one on the Royal
Philanthropic Vaccine Expedition. Thanks again, Erica. Thank you so much
for this note Erica that I found it pretty delightful.
(38:24):
Just in general, UM, I know that they're like real
serious social and economic issues that can lead to people
lead to people developing scurvy, but the idea of college
students developing it because they're eating ramen all the time,
it was a little funnier to me. It is. It's
also just a good lesson right to remember that nutrition
is legitimately important. Yes, um also uh, we we have
(38:48):
not had instant ramen on hand at our house for
the most part um just as a rule until the
pandemics started, and especially in the early days of the pandemic,
when a lot of times it was just hard to
find basic staples. We wound up getting a big box
(39:09):
of of shin bowl spicy ramen, and that has become
my traditional thing to eat for lunch on the days
that we record, because very often we have a very
narrow gap you and I between when we finished recording
and when we start our next thing, and and making
(39:31):
an instant ramen bowl. Um has just become my favorite
little thing. Even though today we've had a relatively short
recording session because we're only recording one episode, I'm probably
still going to do it, even though I have plenty
of time to make my lunch. I am a I'm
a huge ramen fan. I love ramen, but um, I
(39:53):
tend to make it fancy rather than making the kind
that you put boiling water in. I do both, and
I have so fun memories when I was a kid. Uh.
My dad his career Air Force, and when I was
a kid, he had a friend who was stationed in
Japan and would ship us just entire crates of ramen
(40:15):
um And that was my breakfast almost every day in
elementary school for at least a couple of years because
I loved it so much um And it has continued
to be one of my big favorites. And I love
to play with it and mess with it. And that's
one of the one of the many things I miss
about normalcy. I don't that word has no meaning anymore.
But um about going to our office is that there's
(40:38):
a really yummy restaurant in our building that makes some
of the best ramen in Atlanta, and I miss it desperately.
I missed that ramen so much. I make it a
point to eat at that restaurant every time I come
to the Atlanta office, which of course is not a
place I've been in well over a year at this point.
We did find a restaurant UM that delivers ramen. Uh
(41:00):
during these as as, we started, like for a long
time we were just making all of our own food,
and then we started really trying to order delivery once
a week to try to support our local restaurants. And
we found this one restaurant that does an amazing job
of number one making the ramen and number two delivering
it in a way that it's still really delicious, um,
(41:21):
which is great. So anyway, that's our whole ramen saga.
I'm sure everybody is very uh very important. Yeah, So anyway,
would you like to send us a note about some
ramen or scurvy or oranges or anything like that. We're
at History podcast that I heart radio dot com. We're
all over social media ad miss in History. That's where
(41:44):
you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. And you
can subscribe to our show on Apple podcast and I
heart radio app and anywhere else do you get your podcasts?
Stuff you missed in History Class is a pretty function
of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
(42:07):
you listen to your favorite shows. H
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. We've gotten
several requests to do an episode on the Chinese Exclusion
Act of eighteen eighty two, and that's something that we've
(00:24):
mentioned and I feel like a lot of previous episodes,
and it's gotten a longer discussion in some specific episodes
like the Delano Grape Strike and Cannery Row and our
Brief History of Foreign Foods in the US, and then
especially our two parter on Executive Order ninety six in
the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War Two.
(00:46):
So the Chinese Exclusion Act was really the first big
piece in just a long history of United States immigration
laws intended to keep so called undesirables out of the
country and to make contained white racial purity. It was
the United States first major immigration law, and as its
name suggests, its specifically targeted people from China. It made
(01:10):
it illegal for Chinese laborers to enter the US for
ten years, and then it was extended under the Geary
Act in eighteen ninety two and then made permanent in
nineteen o two. It wasn't repealed until nineteen forty three.
That was under the Magnus In Act, although that act
also set a quota on Chinese immigration that worked out
to a maximum of just about a hundred and five
(01:32):
people a year, so not many at all. But the
Chinese Exclusion Act also had a much broader impact beyond
its exclusion of Chinese immigrants and beyond its setting the
foundation for later laws that targeted other groups. When it
was challenged before the Supreme Court, the court's decisions established
(01:52):
what's known as the plenary power doctrine for immigration law. Basically,
that's the idea that the US government's legislative in a
executive branches have virtually unlimited authority to regulate immigration without
a lot of oversight from the courts, even if those
same regulations would be considered discriminatory if they were applied
to U. S citizens. So today we are going to
(02:15):
talk about the Chinese Exclusion Act. We're also going to
talk about the Supreme Court case that's most closely associated
with all this, and that is Chan Ping versus the
United States. For the most part, immigration in the US
from China started after the end of the First Opium War. Briefly,
Britain wanted to import Chinese goods like tea and silk,
(02:38):
but China didn't really have a need for Britain's usual exports,
so to offset that imbalance, Britain started trading opium from
India into Southern China. Opium, of course, is a highly
addictive narcotic, and although it had been introduced into China
before this point, the British opium trade was socially and
economically devastating. The Emperor started issuing edicts against opium in
(03:03):
seventeen twenty nine, but Britain kept exporting it into China
in defiance of Chinese law. Eventually, China destroyed a shipment
of British opium by throwing it into the sea, and
Britain retaliated with force. The resulting war lasted from eighteen
thirty nine to eighteen forty two, and it ended with
the Treaty of Nanjing, which heavily favored British interests. Although
(03:26):
the US had also been involved in the opium trade,
it wasn't one of the belligerents in this war, so
it was not a party to the Treaty of Nanjing.
But the US did want access to the same trading
ports and other concessions that Britain had secured through that treaty,
so US President John Tyler sent a delegation to China
in eighteen forty four, and the result was the Treaty
(03:49):
of Wan Chia, which was described as a Treaty of quote, Peace, Amity,
and Commerce. It called for a quote perfect, permanent and
universal peace and a sincere cordial amity between the US
and China. It was the first diplomatic agreement between the
U s and China, and although it primarily covered US
trading rights with China, it also established the right for
(04:12):
Americans to live in five specific Chinese ports. The Treaties
of Nanjing and Quanxia are two of the unequal treaties
that China signed with other nations in the nineteenth and
early twentie centuries. These treaties heavily favored the interests of
other nations over those of China. China had strictly limited
(04:32):
its trade and its contact with other nations before this point,
and so it went through just massive and tumultuous social
and economic changes as a result of these treaties and
the concessions that they granted to other nations. On top
of that, the Taiping Rebellion was partially fueled by this
upheaval and dissatisfaction over these new foreign influences in China.
(04:56):
It started in eighteen fifty and led to the deaths
of more than twenty milli in people. Then, unresolved issues
from the First Opium War fed into the Second Opium
War that started in eighteen fifty six. There were massive
floods and famines in China in the mid nineteenth century
as well. In the wake of all this violence and
chaos and destruction, people understandably started emigrating from China to
(05:20):
other countries, and while some people were able to pay
their own way, others were essentially indentured workers or in
some cases were the victims of trafficking. During these same years,
the United States needed a new source for laborers, especially
in California. The US took possession of nearly all of
what is now California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico
(05:44):
after the end of the Mexican American War in eighteen
forty eight. That same year, the discovery of gold launched
the California gold Rush, So the US needed people to
farm this newly acquired land, to mine gold, to build infrastructure.
Just on an on they needed people. Yeah, and just
from a practical but also unpleasant level, people were going
(06:07):
to have to come from somewhere else. The indigenous population
of California is estimated to have been at about a
hundred and fifty thousand people at the end of the
Mexican American War, and they faced disease, the loss of land,
and genocide at the hands of white settlers in the
California government over the following decades. And although some newcomers
(06:27):
to California did bring their enslaved workforces with them, when
California was admitted to the Union in eighteen fifty, it
was as a free state, so the United States was
just needing to bring in workers from some other source.
One of the people proposing that these new laborers come
from China was Aaron Hate Palmer. His memoir Geographical, Political
(06:50):
and Commercial on the present state, productive resources and Capabilities
for commerce of Siberia, Manchuria, and the Asiatic Islands of
the Northern Pacific Ocean, and on the importance of opening
commercial intercourse with those countries. We Love. A long title
uh that book was addressed to President James K. Polk
In in addition to summarizing quote, the present state, productive
(07:14):
resources and capabilities for commerce of several comparatively unknown countries
in the East. The eighth chapter of this work was
titled Quote Policy of Encouraging Immigration of Chinese Agricultural Laborers
to California semi colon Railroad from the Mississippi to the
Bay of San Francisco. This chapter began quote with the
(07:35):
view of bringing the fertile lands in California under early cultivation.
I would suggest the policy of encouraging immigration of agricultural
laborers from China to that territory. No people in all
the East are so well adapted for clearing wild lands
and raising every species of agricultural product, especially rice, cotton, tobacco, sugar,
(07:58):
and silk. As the Chinese palmer goes on to describe
how a colony of Chinese laborers in California would also
bring in trade from China and from other parts of Asia.
He also advocates the construction of a railroad connecting the
Mississippi River to San Francisco, which would connect the Eastern
US to the West coast for trade with Asia. The
(08:20):
United States would undertake such a railroad under the Pacific
Railway Act, which was signed into law in eighteen sixty two.
As a side note here, Palmer would also go on
to draft such documents as Plan for Opening Japan, which
formed the foundation for commodore Matthew Perry's voyage to open
Japan to Western trade by force. Palmer petitioned Congress for
(08:42):
compensation and recognition for his work. He was apparently very
annoyed that he had not been recognized or paid for
all of this. That led to an Act for the
Relief of Arin H. Palmer in eighteen sixty one, and
under that Act he was paid three thousand dollars. In
the wake of all this, the number of Chinese people
(09:02):
living in the US rose dramatically. In eighteen forty, there
were four people of Chinese origin known to be living
in the United States. In eighteen fifty there were just
over four thousand, but by eighteen sixty that number had
grown to almost thirty five thousand. That's a big number,
and it sounds like a huge increase and it is,
but it's still tiny compared to the total US population
(09:25):
of thirty one million people at the time. So at
the national level, looking at things from the federal government's perspective,
these were desperately needed, relatively inexpensive workers who were doing
critical manual labor. Some of that labor was incredibly difficult, unpleasant,
and dangerous. That was especially true as Chinese workers started
(09:46):
building the Transcontinental Railroad. They made up between eighty and
ninety percent of the workforce on the railroad's western portion.
But locally, white people in the Western US, especially in California,
saw Chinese immigrants as a threat. This was especially true
during the Gold Rush, as white miners tried to exclude
(10:06):
Chinese people from mining camps and prevent Chinese people from
staking claims. Basically, as soon as Chinese immigrants started branching
out beyond doing manual labor, white people resisted. We will
get into more about that. After a quick sponsor break
(10:30):
during the eighteen fifties and sixties, the state of California
started really trying to discourage immigration from China and to
place restrictions on Chinese people who were already in the state.
In eighteen fifty four, the California Supreme Court issued its
decision in People Versus Hall, which ruled that Chinese people
could not testify against white people in court. The language
(10:54):
of the court's ruling was explicitly racist, including describing Chinese
people as inferior. In eighteen fifty eight, California passed a
law that barred Chinese and Mongolian people from entering the state.
Were generally they were also just the same kinds of
discriminatory segregation laws that we've seen in other contexts, and
laws that were just applied only to the Chinese population
(11:17):
and not to everyone else. At the same time, the
United States was signing new treaties with China. In eighteen
fifty eight, the U s and China signed the Treaty
of chian Jin, which supplemented and revised the Treaty of
One Chia. The Treaty of Tianjin again emphasized this idea
of establishing a quote firm, lasting and sincere friendship between
(11:38):
the two nations. The Treaties of Tianjin and Wan Chia
both outlined various rights and protections for American citizens who
were living in China, but they didn't really do the
same for Chinese citizens who were living in the United
States or really mentioned Chinese immigration to the US at all.
That changed with the Ling Games Seward Treaty of eighteen
(12:02):
sixty eight that was named for US Minister to China
Anthon Berlin Game, who had started working directly for the
Chinese government, and for Secretary of State William Seward. In
addition to again reiterating and expanding American trading rights with China,
this treaty also specified that both Chinese and American citizens
had a quote inherent and unalienable right to change their
(12:25):
home and allegiance. In other words, Americans could immigrate to
China and Chinese people could immigrate to the US without restriction.
At the same time, quote nothing herein contained shall be
held to confer naturalization upon citizens of the US in China,
nor upon the subjects of China in the United States.
(12:46):
U s citizens could also enjoy all the privileges of
a public education under control of the Chinese government, and
Chinese citizens could do the same in the US. Chinese
and American citizens were each allowed to establish their own
schools in the other country as well. But even as
the federal government was establishing this pretty unrestricted right to
(13:08):
immigrate between China and the United States, discrimination against Chinese
people already in the United States was really increasing. The
same types of racist stereotyping that had been used to
justify slavery was used to justify discrimination and violence against
Chinese immigrants. Chinese men were described as being useful only
(13:29):
for manual labor, while Chinese women were cast as sex workers.
Compounding all of this were perceptions that Chinese people would
work for such low wages that they made it impossible
for white people to compete. Employers also started bringing in
Chinese workers to break strikes, and that drew the ire
of the workers they were replacing and the unions that
(13:51):
represented them. And the language used to describe Chinese workers
often carried a connotation of damage and destruction. These immigrants
were described as an invasion, or a flood, or a deluge,
or even a plague of locusts. The idea was that
once the railroad was finished, or the mine was played out,
or the crop was brought in, then these workers would
(14:13):
swarm into another area and destroy everything in their path.
This was worsened by the Panic of eighteen seventy three,
which kicked off a financial depression and also led to
increased competition for fewer and fewer jobs. White communities and
business leaders along the West Coast, especially in California, started
pressing the federal government to take action against this supposed
(14:37):
Chinese threat. In eighteen seventy five, less than a decade
after signing the Berlin Game Treaty, the federal government responded
to this with the Page Act. The Page Act barred
US citizens from bringing quote any subject of China, Japan,
or any Oriental country into the US without their free
and voluntary consent. In other words, it banned are Ricans
(15:00):
from bringing indentured or otherwise unfree workers to the US
from these countries. Section three of the Page Act also
began quote The importation into the United States of women
for the purposes of prostitution is hereby forbidden, and it
empowered port collectors to inspect vessels and their passengers to
confirm that this law was being followed. The Page Act
(15:23):
essentially assumed that Asian women immigrating to the US were
sex workers, and it subjected them to degrading and humiliating
exams and interrogations upon arrival. Before this point, Chinese immigrants
to the US had been predominantly male, since so many
were being contracted to work as manual laborers, but the
(15:45):
Page Act became an even bigger deterrent for women, and
it reinforced stereotypes that connected Asian women to sex work.
Combined with a rise and anti missagination laws which made
it illegal for people of different races to marry, this
meant that the vast majority of Chinese people in the
US were single men or men whose families are back
(16:06):
in China. Was basically a deterrent to forming actual families
and communities here in the US. We talked about some
similar stuff in our Delano grape strike episode with Filipino
workers who were not permitted to have wives or to
bring their wives from the Philippines. Eighteen seventy five was
(16:28):
also the year that Chai chan Ping arrived in the
US to work, and he worked in the United States
for the next twelve years, and during those years, the
US continued to pass new restrictions on immigration from China
and other parts of Asia, and on Chinese immigrants already
in the country. California adopted a new state constitution in
(16:48):
eighteen seventy nine, which included Article nineteen. It was simply
called Chinese. Section two of this article began quote no
corporation now existing or hereafter. Four under the laws of
this State, shall, after the adoption of this Constitution, employed,
directly or indirectly, in any capacity, any Chinese or Mongolian.
(17:11):
Section three reads, in its entirety quote, no Chinese shall
be employed on any state, county, municipal, or other public work,
except in punishment for crime. Also in eighteen seventy nine,
the US Senate and House passed a bill that mandated
that ships arriving in the United States could carry no
more than fifteen Chinese workers. President Rutherford B. Hayes vetoed
(17:37):
this bill because it conflicted with the treaties in place
with China, including the Berlin Game Treaty, but then to
address that, he sent a commission to China, headed by
diplomat James Angel, to negotiate a new treaty, and the
result of that negotiation was the Angel Treaty, signed in
eighteen eighty. The Angel Treaty was written to apply only
(17:58):
to laborers, although the deaf nition of laborer expanded over time.
It read, in part quote, whenever, in the opinion of
the Government of the United States, the coming of Chinese
laborers to the United States or their residents therein effects
or threatens to affect the interests of that country, or
to endanger the good order of the said country, or
(18:19):
of any locality within the territory thereof the Government of
China agrees that the Government of the United States may regulate, limit,
or suspend such coming or residents, but may not absolutely prohibited.
This treaty's second article declared that quote Chinese subjects, whether
proceeding to the United States as teachers, students, merchants, or
(18:41):
from curiosity, together with their body and household servants and
Chinese laborers who are now in the United States, shall
be allowed to go and come of their own free
will and accord, and shall be accorded all the rights, privileges, immunities,
and exemptions which are a cord to the citizens and
subjects of the most favored Nation. However, just two years
(19:06):
after signing the Angel Treaty, the United States passed the
Chinese Exclusion Act, or, as it was formerly known, an
Act to execute certain treaty stipulations relating to Chinese. It
banned Chinese laborers from coming to the US for ten years,
and it defined laborers as quote both skilled and unskilled
(19:26):
laborers and Chinese employed in mining, and it also included
this clause, no state court or court of the United
States shall admit Chinese to citizenship. Now, you could make
the argument that because this applied only to laborers, it
was not absolutely prohibiting people from coming from China to
(19:47):
the United States, which is like the Angel Treaty had
said that the U s could limit but not absolutely prohibit.
That's still kind of like, well, technically level of argument.
This act did not apply to Chinese people who were
already in the US before the Angel Treaty was signed,
or to people who arrived within ninety days of the
(20:10):
passage of the Exclusion Act, at least in terms of
the ability to come and go. The the fact that
they then could not become citizens that applied to everyone.
And this established a process to take place at American
ports which would document the right of these people who
you know, were exempt under this part of the treaty
to come and go. The Customs collector would document all
(20:32):
Chinese passengers on departing vessels, and then these passengers were
entitled to receive a certificate that would quote entitled the
Chinese laborer to whom the same is issued to return
to and re enter the United States upon producing and
delivering the same to the Collector of Customs of the
district that which such Chinese labor shall seek to re enter.
(20:54):
So basically, if you were already here, you were supposed
to be able to come and go. You could return
to China or go somewhere else, and they come back
into the United States. In practice, this act banned virtually
all immigration to the US from China, and it also
sparked a massive amount of horrific anti Chinese violence in
the US. There had been mass anti Chinese violence before
(21:17):
this point. As one example, on October seventy one, a
white man was killed during a shootout involving several Chinese men,
and in retaliation, a white mob attacked the Chinese community
of Los Angeles, lynching at least seventeen people. But after
the Exclusion Act was passed, white communities on the West
(21:37):
Coast felt empowered to purge their Chinese populations, and they
subjected Chinese neighborhoods to riots and other mass violence. Multiple
cities and towns expelled their entire Chinese population, including Tacoma, Washington,
which fourth marched its remaining Chinese residents out of town.
On November three. At least Chinese men were massacred in
(22:02):
Rock Springs, Wyoming on September thirty. This whole period came
to be known as the Driving Out, and it really
had a lot of similarities to the mass violence against
black communities that we've talked about in previous episodes, including
our episode on the Red Summer of nineteen. There was
a widespread perception outside of the Chinese community that Chinese
(22:27):
immigrants were ignorant and illiterate, but really the Chinese immigrant
community in the US was deeply interconnected, organized, and legally
very savvy. Chinese benevolent and mutual aid associations had started
to form in the US almost as soon as Chinese
immigrants had started arriving. In eighteen eighty two, the Six
(22:47):
most Powerful formed the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, also known
as the Chinese Six Companies. Its leadership included Chinese merchants
and other wealthy and prominent people, and it kept attorney
is on a retainer to deal with legal issues that
involved Chinese immigrants, so did the Chinese Consulate. This led
(23:07):
to a huge number of court cases as people started
arriving from China into the United States without that certificate
that was described under the Chinese Exclusion Act that would
guarantee them the right to return. In some cases, this
was because they were really new arrivals. They hadn't been
in the United States before. But there were plenty of
(23:27):
reasons that people might really be returning to the US
having left previously, but without the right paperwork to prove
that they had previously been in the country. They could
have left the United States before the Exclusion Act was passed,
at which point no such certificates are being issued, or
they just might not have been issued. One fact said
(23:49):
that they were entitled to it, not that they were
guaranteed to receive it. This caused problems at the ports,
as officials had to work out whether people really were
legally allowed to enter the US. These cases often wound
up in courts. The collector of the Port of San
Francisco claimed that of the more than twenty Chinese people
allowed into the US in the first fourteen months after
(24:12):
the Act was signed, more than a third of them
had come through the courts without a re entry certificate.
This was a big deal. On January four, Judge Ogden
Hoffman of the U S District Court for the Northern
District of California included this statement in his ruling on
one of these cases. Quote, if the Chinese immigrants come
(24:34):
in the future and anything like the number in which
they have recently arrived, it will be impossible for the
courts to fulfill their ordinary functions. There remain on the
calendar of the District Court. I am informed a hundred
and ninety cases for five or six weeks, even with
night sessions, I have been unable to make any great
(24:54):
impression on them. All ordinary business, public and private of
the court is necessary airily suspended or if resumed. These passengers,
many of who may be entitled to their discharge, are
left either in custody or on bail, awaiting the determination
of their cases. It is therefore an urgent necessity that Congress,
(25:17):
by committing that duty to commissioners, or by some other mode,
should relieve the courts of the burden of passing on
these cases. To close these legal loopholes. On July three,
eighty four, the U. S Government broadened the Chinese Exclusion Act,
making those re entry certificates issued at port the only
(25:37):
evidence that could establish a person's right to re enter
the United States, but this expansion didn't make any provision
for people who had left the US before it was passed.
This led to a Supreme Court case involving Chu Chung,
who had left the US for Hawaii in eighteen eighty
one and had tried to return to the U s
in eighteen eighty four. In this case, Young was a
(26:00):
allowed to enter the US because the Court found that
the law had not intended to strip people of rights
they had previously had under the treaty, which included being
able to come and go. Justice Stephen Field, who will
come up again, dissented with this ruling, arguing that it
was quote holy immaterial to inquire whether by the act
assailed it has departed from the Treaty or not, or
(26:23):
whether such departure was accidental or designed, and if the latter,
whether the reasons therefore were good or bad. During the
World arguments, Field had also said, quote Congress never supposed
that Chinaman intended to go back to China and stay
several years. If they do not come back at once,
they should not be allowed to come at all. We're
going to get into Cha Chung Ping's case after we
(26:45):
pause for a sponsor break As we said earlier, Cha
chan Ping traveled into the United States from China in
eighteen eighty seven, and he worked in the US for
the next twelve years. Beyond that, we don't know a
lot about him. I have a lot of unanswered questions,
(27:08):
specifically about his name, Like I don't know how his
name was written in Chinese characters and how that was romanized,
because the romanization methods that exist today, like had not
really been developed yet when he immigrated. There are just uh,
some question marks about how he would have written or
said his own name. On June two, eight seven, he
(27:31):
set sail for China aboard the steamship Gaelic for a visit.
Before the ship left the port, he got the required
certificate that would allow him to re enter the United
States when he got back. On September seven, eight he
set sail from Hong Kong aboard the Belgic that was
a British vessel that was under charter to an American
(27:52):
company and it was bound for San Francisco. The Supreme
Court's decision in his case says that he arrived in
San franci Let's go on October eight, but newspaper reports
about the vessel's arrivals say that it was on the seventh. However,
on October one, while he was still in transit, President
(28:12):
Grover Cleveland signed the Scott Act into law, and the
Scott Act barred re entry for Chinese immigrants to the US,
no matter when they first arrived in or how long
they had lived in the country. The US and China
had been working on yet another treaty. This time, China
had proposed that it curtail immigration to the US with
(28:33):
the hopes that it would ultimately protect its citizens who
were in the United States, but the resulting treaty banned
immigration to the US for twenty years and the return
of Chinese workers to the US. This led to a
huge outcry, and China refused to ratify the treaty, so
the US acted unilaterally and put the same basic provisions
(28:54):
in place with the Scott Act. Yeah, at this point,
China really had no confidence that the United States was
willing or able to protect Chinese citizens who were living
on American soil. The Scott Act made that re entry
certificate that Chai Chomping had obtained before leaving the United
States invalid, and he was not at all unique in
(29:17):
this situation. Even though only a few of these cases
made it all the way to the Supreme Court. It's
estimated that the Scott Act invalidated the re entry permits
of as many as twenty thousand Chinese people, and that
as many as six hundred of them were in transit
to the United States when it was passed. Just in
(29:37):
terms of the passengers aboard the Belgic, there were a
hundred and seventy six people from China, all of whom
were kept there confined to the ship underguard by port officials.
Attorneys began filing petitions on behalf of those one seventy
six people, some of them arguing that they had technically
been under U s jurisdiction before the Scott Act was signed,
(29:59):
since the Jake was operating under an American charter. A
petition for Chai chan Ping was filed on October tenth,
and he was issued a writ of habeas corpus. Chai
chan Ping's hearing was before the Circuit Court of the
United States for the Northern District of California, and the
judge ruled that his detention aboard the Belgic was legal
(30:20):
because of the Scott Act. He had no legal rights
to enter the United States anymore, but his attorneys argued
that this was in violation of existing treaties between the
United States and China, including the Berlin Game Treaty. His
appeal went to the Supreme Court, where it was argued
on March twenty nine, eighteen eighty nine. The fourteenth Amendment
(30:41):
to the U s Constitution is worded as applying to persons,
not citizens, so a person cannot be deprived of life, liberty,
or property without due process of law. Chai Chang Ping's
attorneys made an argument that his right to re enter
the US was effectively property and that he could not
be stripped of it with out due process. They also
(31:02):
reiterated the idea that his exclusion from the US ran
against existing treaties with China. However, the Supreme Court was
unanimous in its decision, which was issued on May thirte
that Cha Chan Ping did not have the right to
re enter the United States, regardless of what the treaties
in place between the US and China actually said in
(31:24):
terms of federal laws and international treaties. The court rule
that neither of them had automatic precedence over the other,
so whichever one was the most recent, was the one
that applied to the situation, but the court also went
way beyond answering just this one specific question. Stephen Johnson Field,
writing for the majority, wrote, quote, to preserve its independence
(31:47):
and give security against foreign aggression and encroachment is the
highest duty of every nation, and to attain these ends,
nearly all other considerations are to be subordinated. It matters
not in what for such aggression and encroachment come, whether
from the foreign nation acting in its national character, or
from vast hordes of its people crowding in upon us.
(32:10):
The court's opinion was also pretty broad and how it
approached the idea of race and assimilation. Quote. If therefore,
the Government of the United States, through its Legislative Department,
considers the presence of foreigners of a different race in
this country who will not assimilate with us to be
dangerous to its peace and security, their exclusion is not
(32:33):
to be stayed because at the time there are no
actual hostilities with the nation of which the foreigners are subjects.
This opinion also framed restrictions on immigration, even if discriminatory,
as a fundamental part of a nation's sovereignty. Quote. The
power of exclusion of foreigners, being an incident of sovereignty
(32:54):
belonging to the government of the United States as a
part of those sovereign powers delegated by the Institution, the
right to its exercise at any time when in the
judgment of the government, the interests of the country require.
It cannot be granted away or restrained on behalf of anyone. Today,
Champing versus the United States is often referred to as
(33:17):
the Chinese Exclusion case, although sometimes it's also grouped in
with three later cases and they become the Chinese Exclusion
Cases together as a group, And although these decisions have
been highly criticized, especially in recent years, they have never
been overturned. As we said at the top of the show.
Together they have formed the foundation for the plenary power doctrine.
(33:40):
In the context of United States immigration law. Basically, people
trying to enter the US aren't citizens, so constitutional protections
against discrimination don't apply to them. And although persons already
in the United States are covered under parts of the
Fourteenth Amendment, specifically the Guarantee of Due Process, persons not
(34:02):
already in the United States really aren't. So through these rulings,
the Supreme Court took a position that the President and
Congress are responsible for immigration law, not the courts, and
not without much court oversight. As for John Ping, we
know he was forced to go back to China, but
that didn't happen for a few more months. His case
(34:24):
had become national news thanks to its potential impact on
the Chinese Exclusion Act, and for weeks after the Supreme
Court issued its ruling, there were headlines claiming that no
one knew where he was. On June, one of his
attorneys gave a statement to the San Francisco Examiner that
he would let the Federal Marshal know when his client
was ready to set sail, and that it wasn't unusual
(34:45):
for it to take up to thirty days for a
person to get their affairs in order and be ready
to leave, even though he was essentially being deported at
this point. Like none of the language around this case
is framed as deportation. It's it's framed as excluding him
from entering the US, even though he had been released
on bond and was already in the US. In August
(35:07):
of eighteen eighty nine, his bondsman agreed to bring him
to the port to board the Arabic, which was scheduled
to depart for China on the twenty two of that month.
It seems to have actually set sail a few days
after that, according to a write up in The New
York Times, which is really insulting in its tone. So
I kind of take this with a grain of salt.
(35:27):
He refused to pay for his passage because he did
not want to leave the United States in the first place.
There were people who came to the US from China
while the Chinese Exclusion Act was enforced. This was particularly
true after the nineteen o six earthquake and fire destroyed
most of San Francisco's public records, so people forged documents
to claim that they had been born in the US
(35:48):
or that they were related to U. S citizens. People
who entered the US through this kind of forged paperwork
became known as paper sons. So it's possible that Chai
chanping return learned to the US, but it is assumed
that he spent the rest of his life in China. Okay,
we don't really know a lot about what happened to
him after this point. We don't know a lot about
(36:09):
him as a person in general. Uh, but we do
know that his case had just a monumental influence on
how the courts have continued to view immigration law in
the United States, and by extension, like how lawmakers make
immigration policy, knowing that the plinary power doctor and is
the long standing precedent at this point, Uh, I have
(36:33):
listener mail. Oh, I was gonna ask you for it,
but you got it. Yes, about something completely different. It's
from Erica and it is titled a Scurvy Story. I
I wanted something a little lighter to take us out,
and this is a a lighter a lighter side of
scurvy Erica, says Hi Holly and Tracy. I just listened
(36:55):
to your episode on scurvy. I missed a few weeks
of podcast around the holidays, and I'm finally catching up
and wanted to share a third hand story with you both.
I graduated with my master's in public health last spring,
and of course, during the MPH program, when we start
learning about randomized controlled trials, we start with James Lynde
and his work identifying a cure for scurvy, and teaching
(37:17):
about this story and its implications for public health. My
professor mentioned his college roommate who prescribed fully to the
classic college student diet of ramen and coffee. During their
first semester at school, the roommate began to feel unwell, fatigue,
body aches, generalized weakness, etcetera. He eventually went to see
a doctor who told him that his all instant ramen
(37:40):
diet had him in the early stages of scurvy. The
doctor sent him off with instructions to eat a flipping
fruit every once in a while. I'm paraphrasing here, and
he quickly recovered. As a fairly recent college graduate, myself,
remembering the story never fails to make me laugh and
inspire me to pick up an orange. Thank you so
much for all that you do. I now work and
(38:01):
an Apartment of Health as part of the COVID Response unit,
and I appreciate your mix of topics this year. I
always have the choice whether I want to distract myself
from public health or learn more about it. I especially
love the scurvy episode and the one on the Royal
Philanthropic Vaccine Expedition. Thanks again, Erica. Thank you so much
for this note Erica that I found it pretty delightful.
(38:24):
Just in general, UM, I know that they're like real
serious social and economic issues that can lead to people
lead to people developing scurvy, but the idea of college
students developing it because they're eating ramen all the time,
it was a little funnier to me. It is. It's
also just a good lesson right to remember that nutrition
is legitimately important. Yes, um also uh, we we have
(38:48):
not had instant ramen on hand at our house for
the most part um just as a rule until the
pandemics started, and especially in the early days of the pandemic,
when a lot of times it was just hard to
find basic staples. We wound up getting a big box
(39:09):
of of shin bowl spicy ramen, and that has become
my traditional thing to eat for lunch on the days
that we record, because very often we have a very
narrow gap you and I between when we finished recording
and when we start our next thing, and and making
(39:31):
an instant ramen bowl. Um has just become my favorite
little thing. Even though today we've had a relatively short
recording session because we're only recording one episode, I'm probably
still going to do it, even though I have plenty
of time to make my lunch. I am a I'm
a huge ramen fan. I love ramen, but um, I
(39:53):
tend to make it fancy rather than making the kind
that you put boiling water in. I do both, and
I have so fun memories when I was a kid. Uh.
My dad his career Air Force, and when I was
a kid, he had a friend who was stationed in
Japan and would ship us just entire crates of ramen
(40:15):
um And that was my breakfast almost every day in
elementary school for at least a couple of years because
I loved it so much um And it has continued
to be one of my big favorites. And I love
to play with it and mess with it. And that's
one of the one of the many things I miss
about normalcy. I don't that word has no meaning anymore.
But um about going to our office is that there's
(40:38):
a really yummy restaurant in our building that makes some
of the best ramen in Atlanta, and I miss it desperately.
I missed that ramen so much. I make it a
point to eat at that restaurant every time I come
to the Atlanta office, which of course is not a
place I've been in well over a year at this point.
We did find a restaurant UM that delivers ramen. Uh
(41:00):
during these as as, we started, like for a long
time we were just making all of our own food,
and then we started really trying to order delivery once
a week to try to support our local restaurants. And
we found this one restaurant that does an amazing job
of number one making the ramen and number two delivering
it in a way that it's still really delicious, um,
(41:21):
which is great. So anyway, that's our whole ramen saga.
I'm sure everybody is very uh very important. Yeah, So anyway,
would you like to send us a note about some
ramen or scurvy or oranges or anything like that. We're
at History podcast that I heart radio dot com. We're
all over social media ad miss in History. That's where
(41:44):
you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. And you
can subscribe to our show on Apple podcast and I
heart radio app and anywhere else do you get your podcasts?
Stuff you missed in History Class is a pretty function
of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
(42:07):
you listen to your favorite shows. H
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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