The Chinese in America - Iris Chang [74]
Was Cleveland being disingenuous? Chinese émigrés immediately challenged the Scott Act in federal court. In Chae Chan Ping v. United States, a laborer (Chae Chan Ping) who had lived in San Francisco since 1875 and had obtained a legitimate return certificate before departing for China in 1887, was denied permission to disembark upon his return to California on October 7,1888. His case went all the way up to the Supreme Court, which upheld the Scott Act, ruling that as the United States “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 to be stayed.” Continuing in this vein, the highest court in the land labeled Chinese immigrants a people “residing apart by themselves, and adhering to the customs and usages of their own country.” As such, the Chinese in America, the Court decided, were “strangers in the land.”
Four years later, in 1892, the Exclusion Act expired, but if anyone had hopes that it would be allowed to die a quiet death, they were disillusioned. Under the Geary Act, which replaced it, Chinese immigration was suspended for another ten years and all Chinese laborers in the United States were now required to register with the government within one year, in order to obtain certificates of lawful residence. Any Chinese caught without this residence certificate would be subject to immediate deportation, with the law placing the burden of proof on the Chinese. The Geary Act also deprived Chinese immigrants of protection in the courts, denying them bail in habeas corpus cases.
Insulted, many Chinese residents refused to comply with the new law. A Chinese consul urged his countrymen not to register, and in cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco the Chinese community ripped up official registration notices. Three Chinese facing deportation under Geary took their case to the Supreme Court. In Fong Yue Ting v. United States, the Court decided that just as a nation had the right to determine its own immigration policy, it also possessed the right to force all foreign nationals to register. In 1895 the Supreme Court ruled in Lem Moon Sing v. United States that district courts could no longer review Chinese habeas corpus petitions, a decision that opened the door to all kinds of corruption and abuse by immigration authorities who assumed the unchecked power to bar or deport Chinese immigrants without fear of opposition from the courts.11
In this era of unchecked anti-Chinese passion, even Americans of Chinese descent found themselves subject to extralegal attempts to strip them of their rights—and their citizenship. John Wise, the collector of customs in San Francisco, would accept testimonials only from Caucasians to verify the U.S. citizenship of Chinese Americans. In an 1893 letter to a California lawyer, Wise boasted that his policy made it “almost next to impossible to prove the birth of a Chinese in this country as they never call in a white physician, and twenty years ago, no record of these births were [sic] kept.”
In 1894, Wong Kim Ark, a twenty-one-year-old Chinese American born in San Francisco, visited his parents in China. Returning the following year, he was denied permission to reenter the country. Once again, despite two setbacks, the Chinese took their case to the courts. Filing a writ of habeas corpus, Wong Kim Ark argued that his native birth entitled him to the privileges of American citizenship. His case would also eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court.
At stake was the very definition U.S.