in the hands of a dozen customs officers stationed in San Francisco, Cali-
fornia, and Port Townsend, Washington Territory. These two gates faced two
distinct forms of unauthorized migration, although at the time neither was
described as such. Before being allowed to disembark in San Francisco, most
Chinese mi grants stood before customs officials to plead their case, some-
times with the help of fraudulent documents. In Washington Territory, most
Chinese passed into the country undetected, making them both unauthor-
ized and undocumented. In short, more than geography distinguished border
enforcement in California from its counterpart in Washington.
In San Francisco, Chinese mi grants relied on the numerous exceptions
written into the Restriction Act. The law attempted to impose rigid occupa-
tional categories on a complex and shifting population, drawing a stark legal
line between newly arrived Chinese workers and every one else. In turn,
Chinese mi grants and their smugglers learned to reinvent themselves as any-
thing but new Chinese laborers.8 Most mi grants made one of three claims
to skirt the law: they purported to belong to the exempted elite, to have pre-
viously resided in Amer ica, or to be merely “in- transit” across the United
States.9 During the Restriction Period, all three assertions provided easy ave-
nues into the country.
Congress deliberately made a broad exemption for Chinese elites, in-
cluding diplomats, merchants, students, and tourists, in efforts to pre-
serve commercial and diplomatic ties with China. As a further gesture of
goodwil , the law gave the Chinese government the power to determine which
men and women would receive these exemptions and the coveted desig-
nation of “section six” mi grants. It was not long before the San Francisco
collector of customs complained that China used “very loose” and “indis-
criminate” definitions, opening the possibility of widespread fraud. More-
over, local customs officials’ attempts to challenge China’s definitions of
section six mi grants usually came to naught. For example, on November 14,
1883, 137 Chinese passengers holding section six certificates arrived on the
steamer Peking. Fearing fraud, the collector of customs denied them landing.
EXPERIMENTS IN RESTRICTION
57
But the shipping com pany telegraphed the Trea sury Department, arguing
that their papers were in order and “had we refused to bring them our
steamers would be barred from [the] China Trade.” Facing pressure from
D.C., officials in San Francisco eventual y relented and admitted the Peking’s
passengers. It was Congress’s expansionist dreams that opened the door to
these exemptions and now U.S. businessmen successfully lobbied to keep the
door ajar.10
It took resources and connections to be designated a Chinese elite, but
many Chinese mi grants found easier openings in the law. The law barred
all new Chinese workers but allowed the migration of “returning laborers.”
It proved difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish new mi grants from old
because Congress struck the provision that mandated passports, fearing that
China would take offense. In lieu of passports, custom officials began issuing
“return certificates” to Chinese departing from U.S. ports, granting them
permission to return in the future. Even this level of federal surveillance was
unpre ce dented at the time. Except as an emergency mea sure during the Civil
War, the United States had never previously required identification at its na-
tional borders. It was not enough, however, to stop unauthorized mi grants
from claiming returning status.11
By August 1885, Special Agent O. L. Spaul ding found that 35,235 return
certificates had been issued at the Pacific ports and 20,506 mi grants had yet
to claim their right to return. “With this number [of return certificates] out-
standing,” observed Spaul ding, “some will find their way back in the hand of
wrong persons.” Since photo graphs were far beyond the enforcement bud get,
return certificates merely included a short description of the mi grant’s fea-
tures. This was hardly a failsafe way to distinguish legal returning mi grants
from others who had purchased a return certificate on the black market.
Physical attributes noted by officials were often as vague as “flat nose,” “large
tated, since one could create, with some determination, a “hole in right ear,”
“scar on forehead” or “mark over right eye.” The prob lem of vague descrip-
tion, believed Special Agent Spaul ding, was largely unavoidable. “Chinese
laborers cannot be easily described,” he complained, “they look much alike.”12
The Trea sury Department passed up an inventive and cheap idea: finger-
printing. An entrepreneur from California wrote to the Trea sury Department
in 1883 recommending that they implement a “system of detection by thumb
58 RESTRICTION
mark,” because “in a million impressions of the thumb no two are alike.”
This system had been used previously in India, and Western scientists were
beginning to believe in its accuracy. However, an anonymous internal
Trea sury Department memo dismissed the idea outright: “It seems to me
the regulations we have already issued are sufficient.” Fingerprinting was
not implemented in the United States until de cades later, when the New
York State Prison Bureau began the practice in 1903.13
Fraudulent return certificates posed difficulties for officials in San Fran-
cisco, but the larger prob lem was that returning Chinese mi grants did not
even need the certificates to land. The Restriction Act’s provisions gave the
right to return to any Chinese laborer who had resided in the United States
prior to the signing of the Angell Treaty in 1880. This pathway for fraudu-
lent entry was created to avoid abrogating treaties with China. In practice,
it meant that any Chinese mi grant could claim to have been in the United
States before the Customs Department began issuing return certificates. In
lieu of documentation, these mi grants could offer a cursory knowledge of
San Francisco geography as sufficient evidence.
Special Agent Spaul ding proclaimed this “one of the most embarrassing
questions presented under the law . . . leaving a wide open door for fraud
and perjury from which even the courts have not been able to protect them-
selves.”14 California congressman William Morrow complained, “The prac-
tical effect of leaving our doors open to Chinamen who will assert and
prove this claim of prior residence is to defeat the whole purpose of [the]
treaty stipulations and legislation.”15 During the Restriction Period, the pri-
mary way that Chinese entered the United States was by asserting returning
status. It was impossible for officials at the time, as it has been for historians
ever since, to determine how many of these mi grants had in fact previously
resided in the United States.16
Federal reports claimed that few Chinese mi grants arrived during the Re-
striction Period, but this was inaccurate. Documents from the port of San
Francisco make it clear that federal statistics did not include numerous
Chinese who entered the United States as returning laborers. The federal
government claimed that only ten Chinese mi grants arrived in 1887. How-
ever, 11,162 Chinese were admitted that year as returning laborers in San
Francisco alone. Migration under Chinese restriction reached its peak in
EXPERIMENTS IN RESTRICTION
59
40000
No. Admitted during Free Migration Period
No. Admitted during Restriction Period
No. Admitted during Exclusion Period
30000
20000
10000
01850
1860
1870
1880
1890
1900
Annual Totals of Chinese Admitted to the United States, 1850–1904. Compiled
annually in June, these totals recorded new and returning Chinese aliens who had
arrived in the previous year. Migration reached a high- water mark in 1882, when news
of an impending restriction law crossed the Pacific. Admission totals during the
Restriction Period represent an undercount, because data on returning Chinese are
only available for the Port of San Francisco. Chart based on data collected by the
author (see Appendix B).
1888, with at least 12,816 entries. Before Congress shifted to a policy of
exclusion, the year 1889 was on track to surpass these numbers.17 When re-
turning mi grants are included in the annual totals of Chinese arrivals, re-
striction’s in effec tive ness becomes clear. Between 1851 and 1882, a period of
free Chinese migration, the mean annual number of Chinese entries was
10,388.18 Between 1883 and 1889, the Restriction Period, the mean number
of documented mi grants admitted in San Francisco per year was 8,746, an
annual reduction of only 16 percent.
Several congressmen even claimed that the number of Chinese mi grants
actually increased during restriction. They may have reached this conclu-
sion by including in their estimates the annual number of Chinese admitted
who were “in transit” across Amer ica. The law was silent on the topic of Chi-
nese laborers who traveled through the United States en route to interna-
tional destinations such as Cuba, South Amer ica, Canada, or China. But
60 RESTRICTION
concerns about U.S. commerce pushed the U.S. attorney general to create
yet another loophole in Chinese restriction. Before the law even went into
effect, U.S. shipping companies began lobbying the secretary of trea sury, sec-
retary of state, and U.S. attorney general to exempt “in transit” Chinese
mi grants. An agent of the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railway Com-
pany reported that forty thousand to sixty thousand Chinese laborers were
expected to soon leave Cuba and return to China. At a hundred dollars per
capita, “American interests” could earn at least four million dollars from the
transportation of these Chinese workers. The agent urgently argued for an
exception for these “in transit” Chinese so that the “United States [would]
reap the benefit of this capital, not England.”19 Likewise, C. P. Huntington,
vice president of the Central Pacific Railroad, reminded the secretary of state
that the Southern Pacific Railroad Com pany was building a railway con-
necting California to the Gulf of Mexico in hopes of efficiently exporting
grains grown in the U.S. West across the Atlantic. To make this endeavor
successful, the com pany desperately needed westward- bound traffic, namely
the transportation of Chinese mi grants from Cuba. If the U.S. government
denied transportation to Chinese workers, argued Huntington, it would
jeopardize an American venture that could earn fifteen to eigh teen million
dollars a year. Even after the Restriction Act was passed, U.S. commercial
interests sought continued profit from Chinese migration.
At first, Attorney General Benjamin Brewster interpreted the law strictly,
barring the entry of “in transit” Chinese on July 18, 1882. But by December
of that year, under additional pressure from the Chinese government, Brew-
ster reversed course and declared his earlier interpretation erroneous.
Starting on January 23, 1883, Chinese who declared their intention to merely
cross the continent, bound for another country, could gain admittance to
the United States.20 U.S. officials counted 2,151 non- immigrant Chinese in
1883; 3,194 in 1884; and 5,330 in 1885. Officially, all in- transit aliens and tour-
ists departed the United States, but both local officials and federal politi-
cians feared widespread fraud. Congressman William Morrow complained
to the secretary of trea sury in 1886, “In San Francisco it is generally believed
that a large number of those who have been landed on this claim have, in
one artifice and another, managed to remain in the United States, or if they
have departed, it has only been to return.” If non- immigrant Chinese are
included for the years from 1883 to 1889, the mean annual number of arrivals
EXPERIMENTS IN RESTRICTION
61
during restriction was 12,165, or 15 percent higher than during the period of
free migration.21
American judges further weakened the law, in part because they sympa-
thized with U.S. interests in China. For example, Judge Stephen Field, who
was serving on the California Cir cuit Court (and would later join the Su-
preme Court), made his diplomatic prerogatives clear in the case Re Low Yam
Chow (1882). Low Yam Chow, a Chinese merchant with connections to
American enterprises, arrived in San Francisco from Panama after the pas-
sage of the Restriction Act. Though a merchant, he was denied landing
because he lacked a section six certificate from the Chinese government.
Chow appealed the decision because he had traveled from Central Amer ica,
not China, and therefore had no way to obtain a certificate. The court found
for the petitioner and used its ruling to scold San Francisco customs offi-
cers. Field wrote that the Restriction Act was intended to “put restriction
upon the emigration of laborers” and “not to interfere, by excluding Chi-
nese merchants, or putting unnecessary and embarrassing restrictions upon
their coming, with the commercial relations between China and this
country.” “Commerce with China is of the greatest value, and is constantly
increasing,” declared Field; therefore, U.S. officials should avoid legal inter-
pretations that would “tend to lessen that commerce.” He admonished
“certain officers of the government” for possessing “more zeal than knowl-
edge” and directly threatening U.S. interests in China.22
Matthew Deady, a cir cuit court judge in Oregon, was also out spoken
about the importance of American imperial interests. In October 1882, only
a few months after the Restriction Act was passed, Deady heard his first case,
Re George Moncan. It involved two Chinese seamen who signed labor con-
tracts with a U.S. vessel that arrived in Portland in October 1882 to load a
shipment of wheat bound for Eu rope. While the vessel wa
s docked, a fed-
eral marshal arrested the two Chinese crewmen on the grounds that they
had violated the Restriction Act. The Chinese seamen petitioned for a writ
of habeas corpus , and Judge Deady found for the petitioners. He argued that
Chinese seamen fell outside the scope of the act. “True, their vocation is
labor,” admitted Deady, “but they are not brought here to remain and enter
into competition with the labor of the inhabitants of the country.” Further-
more, he argued that barring Chinese crews on vessels bound for the United
States would “impede or cripple” Amer ica’s trade with China. The judge told
62 RESTRICTION
his courtroom that his job was to enforce the act “without spitefully straining
it to cover a few doubtful or extreme cases, and thereby eventually bringing
it into deserved odium and disrepute.”
Fearing that restriction would undermine U.S. commercial interests in
China, Deady did not hide his disdain for the new law. He maintained that
restriction was denounced by the most “intelligent and influential people of
the country,” because it was seen “as fraught with danger to our commercial
relations with China, as inconsistent with our national policy, as obstructing
the spread of Chris tian ity, and as violative, not only of the treaty, but of the
inherent rights of man.”23 Given his distaste for the legislation and concern
about U.S.- China relations, Deady was reluctant to avidly enforce the Restric-
tion Act.24
Despite these prob lems with enforcement and conviction, federal officials
touted statistics indicating that more Chinese were departing than arriving
in the United States. At the Port of San Francisco, officials reported a net
departure of 1,633 Chinese mi grants in 1883, and 4,788 in 1884. This offered
a ray of hope that restriction was turning the tide of Chinese migration,
because San Francisco had only seen a net loss of Chinese mi grants six
times in the previous thirty years.25 Californians, however, paid more atten-
tion to those arriving than to those departing. It was clear to them that San
Francisco continued to be a bustling entry point for thousands of Chinese
every year, many of whom were in fact returning, while others were arriving
in Amer ica for the first time. As anti- Chinese spokesman Dennis Kearney
remembered, “When the first restriction act went into effect in 1882 less than