Amendment’s guarantees of equal protection to all. But despite the ruling in favor of Wong Kim Ark, over the next hundred years, the federal government continued to try to limit the immigration and naturalization of certain ethnic groups. We have these rights today only because people like Dred Scott and Wong Kim Ark stood up to fight for them. And we will only keep these rights if we continue fighting for them.
Chinese Six Companies
With the nation in the grip of hysteria about the supposedly unassimilable Asian immigrants, Congress continued to make new laws targeting them. The Scott Act of 1888 prohibited reentry by Chinese laborers who had left the country. It also nullified all existing certificates of identity that had permitted the bearers to make temporary trips to China.20
In 1892, Congress passed the Geary Act, which extended the Chinese Exclusion Act for another ten years, and required Chinese immigrants to register with the US government or face imprisonment with forced labor and deportation.21 But trying to get a registration certificate (a precursor to the Green Card) most certainly meant forced labor in jail and deportation because most Chinese immigrants at the time were unauthorized migrants who were considered deportable from the United States. It was designed to be a catch-22. No other immigrant group had to carry around documents proving their lawful status until 1928, when the government started issuing immigrant identification cards.22
These registration cards had their roots in the system of slavery. Before the Civil War, enslaved people were forced to carry identifying passes when they left the plantation, and free black people were required to bear papers proving that they were not slaves. The new registration requirement fueled anger in the Chinese community, leading to comparisons with “dog tags.”
The Geary Act also required white witnesses to testify to a Chinese person’s immigration status, and punished unauthorized immigration with one year of imprisonment and hard labor, along with deportation. In an early act of collective civil disobedience, led by the Chinese Six Companies, Chinese refused to register because they considered the law discriminatory and dehumanizing.
Established in 1862, the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA), also known as the Chinese Six Companies, was an association of Chinese merchants. The main goal of the CCBA was to help Chinese migrants come to the United States and return to China, to take care of poverty-stricken or sick Chinese, and to send their dead back to China for burial.
As the Chinese population grew in the United States and they faced more discrimination, the CCBA got more politically involved. The Six Companies hired lawyers to litigate against discriminatory laws, hired personnel to protect Chinese businesses, campaigned for higher wages and fewer hours for Chinese workers, and smuggled thousands of Chinese across the US-Mexico border between 1882 and 1930.23
The Chinese Six Companies led the fight against the Geary Act by posting flyers in Chinatowns urging the 110,000 Chinese in the United States not to register for the “Dog Tag Law.” The Six Companies also raised funds to finance litigation against the Geary Act. The campaign was enormously successful and became the largest organized act of civil disobedience in United States history. Over 93,445 Chinese didn’t register, thereby risking arrest and detention.24
The Chinese Six Companies filed a lawsuit to challenge the Geary Act on the basis that hard labor and deportation constituted cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. They also argued that the law violated the Fifth and Sixth Amendments by imprisoning people to do hard labor without trial. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court disagreed and ruled that as a sovereign nation, the United States could choose to detain and deport any person or race.25 This provided the legal justification for the immigrant detention and deportation regime that exists today.
While the courts upheld the detention and deportation of undocumented Chinese under the Geary Act, the federal government soon realized that it did not have the enforcement capacity to arrest, detain, and deport about 100,000 undocumented Chinese immigrants. Though they did not win in court, the Chinese Six Companies won through civil disobedience, by encouraging people not to register. Therefore, the Geary Act became an unfunded mandate. Over time, the Chinese Six Companies filed lawsuits to carve out and broaden exceptions to the Geary Act for Chinese merchants, students, and family members of Chinese Americans. Congress finally removed these restrictions in 1943, during World War II, in a diplomatic gesture towards its ally, China. However, the remaining restrictions provided the structural basis for detentions and deportations that continue to this day.
Beyond the system of detention and deportation of undocumented migrants, the registration cards and requirements imposed by the Geary Act have carried over into present times. Present-day immigration laws still require immigrants to register with the United States government and inform the government within ten days after moving to a new address. Lawful permanent residents must carry an unexpired registration certificate, popularly known as a Green Card. These cards must be renewed every ten years, even though the permanent resident status itself does not expire. Even today we challenge “show me your papers” laws in states, such as Arizona and Alabama, mandates which the federal government has had on the books for generations.
Kaoru Yamataya
By the early 1900s, the United States had established the power to detain and deport all noncitizens, even without a trial. Deportation served as a social filter by restricting eligibility for citizenship and fundamentally shaping the social composition of the United States. The government enacted provisions to exclude entry to individuals who were poor, involved in sex work, or likely to become a public charge (dependent on the government for assistance). These provisions were primarily used to deny agency to immigrant women as independent economic actors. Individuals were deportable if they were deemed to become a public charge within three years of their entry.
Fifteen-year-old Kaoru Yamataya sought entry into the United States on July 11, 1901, in Seattle, Washington.26 She was allowed to land, but was arrested four days later, along with her fellow traveler, Masataro Yamataya, who was most likely her trafficker. Ten days after her arrest, immigration officials convened in a hearing presided over by non-judges, in English, a language that Yamataya did not understand. Board of Special Inquiry found that she was a person likely to become a public charge, which meant that she could be deported. They probably made this judgment because Yamataya was visibly pregnant at the time and did not seem to be married or to have relatives in the United States.
At this time in immigration history, targeting women was commonplace. The growing concern over premarital sex, single motherhood, and what was deemed to be inappropriate sexual behavior helped to shape immigration policies that would disproportionately exclude and deport immigrants who were women or girls.27 Unwed mothers faced deportation, because in this era pregnancy and morality were issues that seemed relevant to good citizenship. Women who were pregnant or suspected of participating in prostitution were the most likely to be deported. Women who arrived at US ports of entry without partners were suspected of coming for immoral purposes, such as engaging in sex work.
The Board of Special Inquiry decided that Yamataya should remain in custody while they requested an order of deportation from the Secretary of the Treasury, which was in charge of immigration enforcement at the time. The Board intended to return her to Japan at the expense of the vessel that had brought her to the U.S. Two months after her arrival, Yamataya gave birth to a baby boy. Unfortunately, he passed away from pneumonia while still in immigration custody.
But Yamataya hired legal counsel and fought back. She contended that she came to the United States to further her education, and that she did not engage in sex work.28 Yamataya’s lawyers contended that she was entitled to due process as someone on US soil, and that the law used by the Board to order her deportation was unconstitutional because it did not provide her with a proper hearing. Due process generally requires notice of allegations, the opportunity to be heard by a judicial officer, and a trial for certain types of judicial proceedings. Technically, Yamataya never
