Geary Act
Encyclopedia
The Geary Act was a United States
law passed in 1892 written by California
Congressman Thomas J. Geary
. It extended the Chinese Exclusion Act
of 1882 by adding onerous new requirements.
The law required all Chinese
residents of the United States to carry a resident permit
, a sort of internal passport
. Failure to carry the permit at all times was punishable by deportation
or a year of hard labor
. In addition, Chinese were not allowed to bear witness
in court, and could not receive bail
in habeas corpus
proceedings.
The Geary Act was challenged in the courts but was upheld by the United States Supreme Court in an opinion by Justice Horace Gray
, Fong Yue Ting v. United States, 149 U.S. 698, 13 S. Ct. 1016. 37 L.Ed. 905 (1893), Justices David Josiah Brewer
, Stephen J. Field, and Chief Justice Melville Fuller
dissenting.
and in the 1860s when the Central Pacific Railroad
recruited labor to build its portion of the Transcontinental Railroad. Once gold became more scarce and labor more competitive, white hostility to the Chinese (as well as other foreign laborers) intensified in the West. This hostility eventually led to the passage of anti-Chinese immigration laws, such as the paternalistic Page Act of 1875
and the first real blanket immigration restriction law banning all people of a specific nationality, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The Act excluded Chinese "skilled and unskilled laborers and Chinese employed in mining" from entering the country for ten years under penalty of imprisonment and deportation, as well as denying U.S. citizenship to Chinese immigrants. The Act effectively began immigration enforcement at the border because prior to the passage of the Page Act and Chinese Exclusion Act, there existed no trained officials and interpreters, nor the bureaucratic machinery with which to enforce immigration restriction laws or an effort to document and track the movements and familial relationships of immigrants. These types of policies implemented in the Page and Chinese Exclusion Acts have largely been seen as due to what Erika Lee depicts as Government officials’ deep “suspicion Chinese were attempting to enter the country under fraudulent pretenses".
The Geary Act, besides renewing the exclusion of Chinese laborers for another 10 years, also outlined provisions that required Chinese already in the U.S. to possess “certificates of residence” (as well as “certificates of identity” after the McCreary amendment was added) that served as proof that they entered the U.S. legally and had the right to remain in the country. The certificates of residence contained the name, age, local residence, occupation, and photograph of the applicant. The act placed the burden of proof of their right to be in the U.S. on the Chinese themselves, denied bail to Chinese in habeas corpus proceedings, made it the duty of all Chinese laborers in the U.S. to apply within one year for a certificate of residence, with a duplicate kept in the office of the Collector of Internal Revenue, and suitable penalties were prescribed for any falsification of certificates. Another of the Act’s provisions required two white witnesses to testify to a Chinese person’s immigration status. If any Chinese laborer within the United States without this certificate of residence was “deemed and adjudged to be unlawfully in the United States”, they could be arrested and forced to do hard labor, and be deported after a year. This was the first time ever illegal immigration to the U.S. was made punishable by such a harsh degree.
Even though this Act seems to have granted no concessions to Chinese immigrants whatsoever, historians such as Elmer Clarence Sandmeyer have noted that the Act was actually thought to be by many Californians to be disappointing in that it did not achieve total exclusion. Although the Act stated that these certificates – as well as similar “certificates of identity” later created by the then newly formed Bureau of Immigration to document all Chinese who were actually exempt from the Exclusion and subsequent Geary Acts (for example merchants, teachers, travelers, and students) – were supposed to serve as “indubitable proof of legal entry”, the documents did not function to protect legal immigrants and residents from government harassment. As Erika Lee describes, because the Act required all Chinese to possess the certificates, the entire Chinese community in the U.S. – including immigrants and residents who were supposed to be exempt from the exclusionary laws – was exposed to the same level of constraint and inquiry governing Chinese laborers. The motivation behind this unprecedented level of inquiry, says Lee, was quite bluntly due to the prejudiced view that it was, as Senator Geary himself stated, “impossible to identify [one] Chinaman [from another]”. No other immigrant group were required to hold documents proving their lawful residence until 1928, when ‘immigrant identification cards’ were first issued to any new immigrant arriving for permanent residence (these were replaced by green cards, officially alien registration receipt cards, after 1940), a fact that Lee calls “gatekeeping” and sees as rooted in “a western American desire to sustain white supremacy in a multiracial West”.
Resistance came from outside the West of the country as well. The Chinese Equal Rights League in New York and Brooklyn pleaded that its members to help their fellow countrymen, and enrolled some 150 English-speaking Chinese merchants and professionals in New York. Its leaders argued that by making Chinese immigrants pay the “illegal costs and expenses” of enforcing the law, the bill imposed taxation without representation. The Chinese Equal Rights League was able to gain much support from whites on the East Coast, as on September 22, 1892, more than one thousand U.S. citizens joined some two hundred Chinese merchants and laborers at Cooper Union in Manhattan to protest the Geary Act.
Several Chinese that refused to register for their certificate of residence brought suit that, upon appeal, was brought before the Supreme Court in Fong Yue Ting v. United States. Among some of the questions brought before the Court was whether the Act violated the 1868 Burlingame Treaty
with China, whether hard labor and deportation constituted cruel and unusual punishment and thus violated the Eighth Amendment, whether the Act violated Fifth and Sixth Amendments protections by permitting imprisonment with hard labor without prior indictment or jury trial, whether the act violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s prohibition against the taking of property or liberty without due process, among other issues. The Court’s 5 to 3 decision, delivered by Justice Horace Gray
, ruled that the if the U.S. as a sovereign nation had the power to exclude any person or any race it wished, it also must be able to deport any person or race it wished, and thus upheld the Geary Act.
Upon hearing the decision, the Chinese Consulate, the Six Companies, and many Chinese in the U.S. stated that they refused to pay their way back to China if deported, thus leaving the U.S. government financially responsible. The Chinese Government also informed the U.S. that if it acted on the law, it would end all relations – diplomatic and economic – with the U.S. Additionally, since Congress did not write any provisions granting money to pay for, and thus enforce, deportations, the Act as was rendered moot until it was amended through the McCreary amendment (named after the senator who proposed it) to appease the Chinese government, but did so only by providing an additional six months for Chinese to register for the residency certificates. Even with the amendment, Congress only appropriated several hundred thousand dollars to the law’s enforcement.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
law passed in 1892 written by California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
Congressman Thomas J. Geary
Thomas J. Geary
Thomas J. Geary was a U.S. Representative from California.Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Geary moved with his parents to San Francisco, California, in April 1863.He attended the public schools.He studied law at St...
. It extended the Chinese Exclusion Act
Chinese Exclusion Act (United States)
The Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States federal law signed by Chester A. Arthur on May 8, 1882, following revisions made in 1880 to the Burlingame Treaty of 1868. Those revisions allowed the U.S. to suspend immigration, and Congress subsequently acted quickly to implement the suspension of...
of 1882 by adding onerous new requirements.
The law required all Chinese
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
residents of the United States to carry a resident permit
United States Permanent Resident Card
United States lawful permanent residency refers to a person's immigration status: the person is authorized to live and work in the United States of America on a permanent basis....
, a sort of internal passport
Passport
A passport is a document, issued by a national government, which certifies, for the purpose of international travel, the identity and nationality of its holder. The elements of identity are name, date of birth, sex, and place of birth....
. Failure to carry the permit at all times was punishable by deportation
Deportation
Deportation means the expulsion of a person or group of people from a place or country. Today it often refers to the expulsion of foreign nationals whereas the expulsion of nationals is called banishment, exile, or penal transportation...
or a year of hard labor
Hard Labor
Hard Labor is the eleventh album by American rock band Three Dog Night, released in 1974 .- Cover Artwork :The original album cover, depicting of the birth of a record album , was deemed too controversial and was soon reworked with a huge bandage covering the "birth". The cover also includes an...
. In addition, Chinese were not allowed to bear witness
Witness
A witness is someone who has firsthand knowledge about an event, or in the criminal justice systems usually a crime, through his or her senses and can help certify important considerations about the crime or event. A witness who has seen the event first hand is known as an eyewitness...
in court, and could not receive bail
Bail
Traditionally, bail is some form of property deposited or pledged to a court to persuade it to release a suspect from jail, on the understanding that the suspect will return for trial or forfeit the bail...
in habeas corpus
Habeas corpus
is a writ, or legal action, through which a prisoner can be released from unlawful detention. The remedy can be sought by the prisoner or by another person coming to his aid. Habeas corpus originated in the English legal system, but it is now available in many nations...
proceedings.
The Geary Act was challenged in the courts but was upheld by the United States Supreme Court in an opinion by Justice Horace Gray
Horace Gray
Horace Gray was an American jurist who ultimately served on the United States Supreme Court. He was active in public service and a great philanthropist to the City of Boston.-Early life:...
, Fong Yue Ting v. United States, 149 U.S. 698, 13 S. Ct. 1016. 37 L.Ed. 905 (1893), Justices David Josiah Brewer
David Josiah Brewer
David Josiah Brewer was an American jurist and an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court for 20 years.-Early life:...
, Stephen J. Field, and Chief Justice Melville Fuller
Melville Fuller
Melville Weston Fuller was the eighth Chief Justice of the United States between 1888 and 1910.-Early life and education:...
dissenting.
Background
Chinese immigrants came to the U.S. in large numbers during the California Gold RushCalifornia Gold Rush
The California Gold Rush began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The first to hear confirmed information of the gold rush were the people in Oregon, the Sandwich Islands , and Latin America, who were the first to start flocking to...
and in the 1860s when the Central Pacific Railroad
Central Pacific Railroad
The Central Pacific Railroad is the former name of the railroad network built between California and Utah, USA that formed part of the "First Transcontinental Railroad" in North America. It is now part of the Union Pacific Railroad. Many 19th century national proposals to build a transcontinental...
recruited labor to build its portion of the Transcontinental Railroad. Once gold became more scarce and labor more competitive, white hostility to the Chinese (as well as other foreign laborers) intensified in the West. This hostility eventually led to the passage of anti-Chinese immigration laws, such as the paternalistic Page Act of 1875
Page Act of 1875
The Page Act of 1875 was the first federal immigration law and prohibited the entry of immigrants considered "undesirable." The law classified as "undesirable" any individual from Asia who was coming to America to be a contract laborer, any Asian woman who would engage in prostitution, and all...
and the first real blanket immigration restriction law banning all people of a specific nationality, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The Act excluded Chinese "skilled and unskilled laborers and Chinese employed in mining" from entering the country for ten years under penalty of imprisonment and deportation, as well as denying U.S. citizenship to Chinese immigrants. The Act effectively began immigration enforcement at the border because prior to the passage of the Page Act and Chinese Exclusion Act, there existed no trained officials and interpreters, nor the bureaucratic machinery with which to enforce immigration restriction laws or an effort to document and track the movements and familial relationships of immigrants. These types of policies implemented in the Page and Chinese Exclusion Acts have largely been seen as due to what Erika Lee depicts as Government officials’ deep “suspicion Chinese were attempting to enter the country under fraudulent pretenses".
The Act
The original Exclusion Act of 1882 only excluded Chinese laborers for a period of 10 years. Following the Exclusion Act of 1882 and other amendments, such as the documentary requirement changing 1884 amendment, efforts were sought to crack down on illegal entry and residence of Chinese in the U.S. When the 1882 Act expired in 1892, Californian Democratic Senator Thomas Geary sponsored the Act’s renewal and so the extension provision was named after him.The Geary Act, besides renewing the exclusion of Chinese laborers for another 10 years, also outlined provisions that required Chinese already in the U.S. to possess “certificates of residence” (as well as “certificates of identity” after the McCreary amendment was added) that served as proof that they entered the U.S. legally and had the right to remain in the country. The certificates of residence contained the name, age, local residence, occupation, and photograph of the applicant. The act placed the burden of proof of their right to be in the U.S. on the Chinese themselves, denied bail to Chinese in habeas corpus proceedings, made it the duty of all Chinese laborers in the U.S. to apply within one year for a certificate of residence, with a duplicate kept in the office of the Collector of Internal Revenue, and suitable penalties were prescribed for any falsification of certificates. Another of the Act’s provisions required two white witnesses to testify to a Chinese person’s immigration status. If any Chinese laborer within the United States without this certificate of residence was “deemed and adjudged to be unlawfully in the United States”, they could be arrested and forced to do hard labor, and be deported after a year. This was the first time ever illegal immigration to the U.S. was made punishable by such a harsh degree.
Even though this Act seems to have granted no concessions to Chinese immigrants whatsoever, historians such as Elmer Clarence Sandmeyer have noted that the Act was actually thought to be by many Californians to be disappointing in that it did not achieve total exclusion. Although the Act stated that these certificates – as well as similar “certificates of identity” later created by the then newly formed Bureau of Immigration to document all Chinese who were actually exempt from the Exclusion and subsequent Geary Acts (for example merchants, teachers, travelers, and students) – were supposed to serve as “indubitable proof of legal entry”, the documents did not function to protect legal immigrants and residents from government harassment. As Erika Lee describes, because the Act required all Chinese to possess the certificates, the entire Chinese community in the U.S. – including immigrants and residents who were supposed to be exempt from the exclusionary laws – was exposed to the same level of constraint and inquiry governing Chinese laborers. The motivation behind this unprecedented level of inquiry, says Lee, was quite bluntly due to the prejudiced view that it was, as Senator Geary himself stated, “impossible to identify [one] Chinaman [from another]”. No other immigrant group were required to hold documents proving their lawful residence until 1928, when ‘immigrant identification cards’ were first issued to any new immigrant arriving for permanent residence (these were replaced by green cards, officially alien registration receipt cards, after 1940), a fact that Lee calls “gatekeeping” and sees as rooted in “a western American desire to sustain white supremacy in a multiracial West”.
Reaction
Within a few months of the implementing the Act, Chinese in the U.S. began organizing to resist the enforcement of the law. The heads of the Six Companies, the San Francisco branch of The Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, proclaimed that the Chinese in the U.S. ought not register, but rather contribute to a fund for hiring of lawyers to fight the law on the ground of unconstitutionality. The effort was overwhelmingly successful (only 3,169 of the estimated 110,000 Chinese in the country had registered by the April 1893 deadline), yet newspaper coverage of the protest reported Chinese as being slaves to doing whatever The Six Companies told them to do.Resistance came from outside the West of the country as well. The Chinese Equal Rights League in New York and Brooklyn pleaded that its members to help their fellow countrymen, and enrolled some 150 English-speaking Chinese merchants and professionals in New York. Its leaders argued that by making Chinese immigrants pay the “illegal costs and expenses” of enforcing the law, the bill imposed taxation without representation. The Chinese Equal Rights League was able to gain much support from whites on the East Coast, as on September 22, 1892, more than one thousand U.S. citizens joined some two hundred Chinese merchants and laborers at Cooper Union in Manhattan to protest the Geary Act.
Several Chinese that refused to register for their certificate of residence brought suit that, upon appeal, was brought before the Supreme Court in Fong Yue Ting v. United States. Among some of the questions brought before the Court was whether the Act violated the 1868 Burlingame Treaty
Burlingame Treaty
The Burlingame Treaty, also known as the Burlingame-Seward Treaty of 1868, between the United States and China, amended the Treaty of Tientsin of 1858 and established formal friendly relations between the two countries, with the United States granting China most favored nation status...
with China, whether hard labor and deportation constituted cruel and unusual punishment and thus violated the Eighth Amendment, whether the Act violated Fifth and Sixth Amendments protections by permitting imprisonment with hard labor without prior indictment or jury trial, whether the act violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s prohibition against the taking of property or liberty without due process, among other issues. The Court’s 5 to 3 decision, delivered by Justice Horace Gray
Horace Gray
Horace Gray was an American jurist who ultimately served on the United States Supreme Court. He was active in public service and a great philanthropist to the City of Boston.-Early life:...
, ruled that the if the U.S. as a sovereign nation had the power to exclude any person or any race it wished, it also must be able to deport any person or race it wished, and thus upheld the Geary Act.
Upon hearing the decision, the Chinese Consulate, the Six Companies, and many Chinese in the U.S. stated that they refused to pay their way back to China if deported, thus leaving the U.S. government financially responsible. The Chinese Government also informed the U.S. that if it acted on the law, it would end all relations – diplomatic and economic – with the U.S. Additionally, since Congress did not write any provisions granting money to pay for, and thus enforce, deportations, the Act as was rendered moot until it was amended through the McCreary amendment (named after the senator who proposed it) to appease the Chinese government, but did so only by providing an additional six months for Chinese to register for the residency certificates. Even with the amendment, Congress only appropriated several hundred thousand dollars to the law’s enforcement.
See also
- The Chinese Immigration Act, 1923 - CanadaCanadaCanada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
- Chinese Immigration Act of 1885Chinese Immigration Act of 1885The Chinese Immigration Act of 1885 placed a head tax on all Chinese immigrants coming to Canada, forcing them to pay a fifty dollar fee to enter the country. In 1900, the fee was raised to one hundred dollars...
- CanadaCanadaCanada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean... - Magnuson ActMagnuson ActThe Magnuson Act also known as the Chinese Exclusion Repeal Act of 1943 was immigration legislation proposed by U.S. Representative Warren G. Magnuson of Washington and signed into law on December 17, 1943 in the United States...
- Immigration and Nationality Services Act of 1965Immigration and Nationality Services Act of 1965Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 abolished the National Origins Formula that had been in place in the United States since the Immigration Act of 1924...
- Burlingame TreatyBurlingame TreatyThe Burlingame Treaty, also known as the Burlingame-Seward Treaty of 1868, between the United States and China, amended the Treaty of Tientsin of 1858 and established formal friendly relations between the two countries, with the United States granting China most favored nation status...
- Scott Act (1888)Scott Act (1888)The Scott Act was a United States law that prohibited Chinese laborers abroad or who planned future travels from returning. Its main author was William Lawrence Scott of Pennsylvania. It was introduced to expand upon the Chinese Exclusion Act passed in 1882...