Beyond  /  Narrative

Sadness of the Paper Son: The Travails of Asian Immigration to the U.S.

Despite the Chinese Exclusion Act, about 300,000 Chinese gained admission to the U.S. between 1882 and 1943. How did they do it?

Despite popular depictions that portrayed Asians and Asian immigrants as particularly docile and accommodating, through their own agency, they sought ways around a system that discriminated against them. When Alien Land Laws, whether enshrined in nineteenth century state constitutions or newly passed state legislation of the early twentieth century, prevented Asian immigrants from buying land, they placed such holdings in the name of their children, who attained citizenship through the 14th Amendment’s birthright citizenship clause. Even in this, Asian Americans played a critical role: Wong Kim Ark’s 1898 Supreme Court case upheld the amendment’s statute regarding citizenship. Paradoxically, racial animus toward Asians worked to construct a discriminatory immigration infrastructure, yet because of this bureaucratic edifice Asian Americans like Wong Kim Ark also confirmed the constitutional guarantees of citizenship.

One of the most notorious methods by which Asians circumvented immigration law was through “paper sons,” in which immigrants claimed membership in groups exempt from such laws such as merchants or a family relationship with native-born citizens. This ingenuity subverted the institutionalized racism of the nation’s immigration law and became common in the first decades of the twentieth century.

Between 1882 and 1943, approximately 300,000 Chinese gained admission to the U.S. Historians estimate that over 90 percent of the Chinese immigrants arriving in the U.S. during this period did so using false papers.  What did this process look like, and how did it unfold? The papers of Montana Senator Thomas J. Walsh in the Manuscript Division provide a revealing example of both these sorts of efforts by Chinese immigrants but also the state’s response.

In 1929, attorney Edward C. Day of Helena, Montana, wrote Senator Thomas J. Walsh regarding the plight of Wong Kim. Kim claimed to have a son, Wong Gin Gin Foo, who had been born in Montana, but was then living in Cuba. Kim had long been a worker at the Montana Club, a private male-only Helena social club for elites established in 1885, which both Day and Walsh patronized. Kim appealed to the former about contacting the latter in regard to Gin Gin Foo’s plight. Walsh contacted the Havana consulate to inquire about Gin Foo’s status. Walsh followed up in mid-October and vouched for both Kim and Gin Foo, adding that “the boy’s father is not expected to live very long.” The consulate in Havana was open to meeting with Gin Foo, but cautioned Walsh regarding the “difficulties surrounding Chinese immigration.”