Enforcing the Borders: Chinese Exclusion along the U.S. Borders with Canada and Mexico, 1882–1924

Erika Lee

There is no part [of the northern border] over which a Chinaman may not pass into our country without fear of hinderance; there are scarcely any parts of it where he may not walk boldly across it at high noon.     —Journalist Julian Ralph, 1891

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There is a broad expanse of land with an imaginary line, all passable, all being used, all leading to the United States. The vigilance of your officers stationed along the border is always keen, but what can a handful of people do? It is a deplorable condition of affairs; we seem to be compelled to bear it; the Chinese do come in from Mexico.     —U.S. Immigrant Inspector Marcus Braun, 1907	2
In September 1924 a Chinese male immigrant named Lim Wah entered the United States illegally from Mexico. His goals were to find work and to join his father, a farm laborer in northern California. Legally excluded from the United States, Lim paid an American $200 to bring him from Mexicali, Mexico, to Calexico, California. They waited until night and then crossed the border, ending up in San Francisco three days later. The Chinese exclusion laws (in effect from 1882 to 1943) greatly hindered Chinese immigration to the United States, but as Lim Wah's case demonstrates, they did not serve as the total barriers that exclusionists had hoped for. Deteriorating political and economic conditions in south China, the availability of jobs in the United States, the U.S. Bureau of Immigration's harsh enforcement procedures at regular ports of entry such as San Francisco, and the Chinese belief that the exclusion laws were unjust—all had the unintended consequence of turning illegal immigration via the borders into a profitable and thriving business. 1	. . .