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Book Review
| Erika Lee, At America's Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882–1943, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. Pp. 352. $55 cloth (ISBN 0-8078-2775-4); $19.95 paper (ISBN 0-8078-5448-4).
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| "How did the Chinese exclusion laws affect the Chinese in America? And how did they transform the United States into a gatekeeping nation, in which immigration restriction—largely based on race and nationality—came to determine the very makeup of the nation and American national identity?" (6) To address these questions, Lee analyzed government records, Chinese-language newspapers, and the private records left by the Chinese themselves. She presents a compelling, readable narrative where she argues that the systems of control and exclusion developed during the Chinese Exclusion era have come to dominate immigration policy. |
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Efforts toward exclusion came from the West Coast, and many white leaders there were immigrants themselves from various parts of Europe. As "suspect whites," they found an expedient cause through which they could both protect the value of their labor and promote white supremacy. Soon after the Exclusion Act of 1882, these leaders controlled a new bureaucracy to stop Chinese immigration. |
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One of the major strengths of her work is that Lee lets the actors of the period speak for themselves. Much of what they said is damning. John Wise, the U.S. collector of customs in San Francisco, wrote this poem for the attorney of an ailing Chinese migrant: "So just to make this poor Wong Fong / Feel very good and nice / I've sent him back to China / Where he can eat his mice" (54). Wise's successor, Terence Powderly, insisted that "I am no bigot," but that exclusion should stop all Asians, including "'the syphilis-tainted, minions of the Mikado, the almond-eyed, pigeon-toed, pig-tailed, hen-faced legions of the celestial empire [who] might storm the citadel of San Francisco'" (65). The Chinese got brutal treatment from these officials, and as Lee shows, these exclusion laws were "applied and administered by public authority with an evil eye and an unequal hand." |
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The second part of her book shows the impact of these laws and of their enforcement. Many who still attempted entry either avoided the authorities or lied to them. The Chinese smuggled themselves into the country, often across the Canadian and Mexican borders. Lee shows how the American government tried both diplomacy and policing, but ultimately, the complex, illegal methods of entry frequently relied on the cooperation of "corrupt immigration officials, and other government employees in China, the United States, and throughout the Americas" (193). |
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While there were legitimate means for the Chinese to enter—as merchants, or as native-born citizens, or as immediate family members of citizens—most who came under these categories had successfully misrepresented themselves. They took "the crooked path." Authorities responded by detaining, interrogating, and inspecting almost all Chinese immigrants. Through their inspections, government officials revealed emergent notions of citizenship: American citizens should speak English, be free from "foreign diseases," know their American history, marry through American customs, and produce white witnesses who could vouch for them. The Chinese dealt with these efforts by using lawyers and by smuggling "coaching papers." Lee shows us the hollow peanut shells and banana peels used for this purpose. |
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But because so many relied on illegal methods of entry, the Chinese community in America was extremely fragile. "It was not uncommon for the Chung Sai Yat Po, San Francisco's main Chinese-language daily newspaper, to print advertisements of Chinese looking for lost relatives" (121). The exclusion laws fragmented that community: "Chinese merchants and Chinese American citizens ... sought to distance themselves from returning laborers and other Chinese attempting to enter the country illegally" (129). Some Chinese turned themselves into the most devastating witnesses against fellow countrymen. All lived in a shadowed paranoia. |
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Lee concludes this important study by noting that as awful as Chinese exclusion was, "these early state efforts pale in comparison to recent campaigns to control immigration." Indeed, this is very true: federal spending for enforcement has increased at a staggering pace, and about one person dies now every day crossing the southern border. There will likely be more fences, lights, obstacles, moats, and federal agents (and vigilantes) to come. |
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Yet as important as this study is, there are other trends in immigration policy that are worth discussing, if only because they complicate Lee's central thesis. For example, immigration laws have changed so that the number of persons entering under employment categories has increased significantly. Since 1990, in many years, over 140,000 persons were admitted permanently into the U.S. as skilled workers, and at least another 55,000 spots have been reserved for "temporary" skilled workers. And over two-thirds of all such migrants have been from Asia during this period. Terence Powderly and John Wise might be happy that they're not alive to see this trend, but this pattern does suggest that the gatekeeping mentality behind American immigration law has been driven for some time now by a much more complex set of race and class concerns. |
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| John S. W. Park
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| University of California, Santa Barbara |
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