Early Chinese Immigrant’s Travel Documents Reveal Clues About Chinese Exclusion Era
In the summer of 1897, Low Sam stated he lived at 522 Apablasa St. in Los Angeles' Chinatown, a building that no longer exists near present-day Union Station. He wished to visit China with legal assurance he could return to the United States. As a Chinese immigrant — ineligible for citizenship and legally categorized as a "laborer," Low Sam needed to navigate a layered series of restrictive laws and practices enacted in the late 19th century. A paper trail of Low Sam's efforts resides in the Chinese Exclusion Act Files at the National Archives in Riverside. What can we learn about Low Sam and the formation of Chinese community in Los Angeles from files like his? Low Sam's file invites us to consider both the creation of U.S. policies of surveillance utilizing photographic imagery and the creation of Chinese community in the midst of the repressive legal climate of the era.
Three years before Low Sam wanted to travel to China, in April 1894, the federal government had required him to register — part of its policy to increase surveillance of Chinese immigrants. He was assigned registration number "82295." When Low Sam filed the requisite paperwork with his 1897 request to travel and return, he included that registration number and a photograph. He also composed a brief biography of his time in the United States. He had arrived in 1887 at about age 36. By 1891, he opened a lodging house at 321 Apablasa and per his file, worked as a gardener. Low Sam's request was granted. In 1897, he transited through the port of San Francisco for departure and return; his request predated the opening of the San Pedro immigration office.
Low Sam and his compatriots built community — in Chinatown and across the Southland. The process of piecing together memories and interpreting those sources can be a challenge. When available, family histories, treasured photographs, letters and artifacts, and community newspapers convey the vibrancy of lives lived. Such sources pulse with details shared, emotions transcribed and memories passed down through generations. Frequently, personal sources are scarce, as in Low Sam's case. As set out above, we have Low Sam's and others' federal immigration files. Though created to enforce racial restrictions, immigration files and other state sources provide particular glimpses into the past.
The U.S. federal government's early experiments on using photographic identification to track the movement of certain populations developed within the context of enforcing Chinese exclusion laws and policies. The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act stipulated the recording of the "name, age, occupation, last place of residence, physical marks of peculiarities and all facts necessary" of these Chinese laborers. The Geary Act of 1892 extended the Chinese Exclusion Act for ten years and required all Chinese residents to register and carry a "Certificate of Residence" with the equivalent of a mugshot. Without the certificate, Chinese visiting overseas could not return to the United States and, likewise, Chinese laborers in the United States faced arrest and possible deportation. Low Sam's photographic portrait, like those of Chinese immigrants before and after, captures his features — as demanded by the bureaucratic order of immigration authorities — and conveys his dispassionate gaze. The accompanying text describes a scar over his left eye that could presumably be verified by inspection of the photographic image and Low Sam's person. The fact that only Chinese were ordered to carry such identification reveals the state's targeting and overwhelming distrust of Chinese Americans. Some fought back by boycotting the identification requirement. They were unsuccessful and the penalty for noncompliance was severe. This photo-identity surveillance system evolved into today's "green card" or permanent resident card. The files remain as witnesses to the growth of this practice of surveillance and of those like Low Sam who navigated it.
Details within the files share clues about the connectedness of community in late 19th-century Southern California. The requests to visit and return from China resemble each other. Applicants like Low Sam had to attest they either had family members who would remain in the United States while they traveled or at least $1,000 of debt owed them that would remain behind. Requiring debt or another connection to the United States fulfilled federal demands — at the intersection of race and class-based bias — that Chinese immigrants not become "wards of the state." Sworn testimony from the person seeking to travel as well as the purported debtors follows. Much of the questioning is repetitive, covering details of arrival and movement within the United States as well as basic family and economic activities. Sometimes the interrogator asks the supporting debtor if he had been a debtor witness in other applicants' requests to travel to China. Collectively, the statements of debts connect individuals across the city to one another and sometimes across different forms of work. Loans purportedly funded the purchase of sewing machines, horses, potatoes (at wholesale cash prices) and funded businesses from fishing to lodging to butchering to gardening. Some appear to be individual loans and others part of businesses that routinely held monies. Some applicants share that they kept assets in Mexican "money," which may have been Mexican silver, a commonly traded commodity.
Low Sam's file reveals both the federal government's restrictive actions and that in the face of nativist racism, Low Sam and others demonstrated legal literacy in creating narratives of debts — real or solely on paper — to accomplish their goals. Low Sam set forth the details of debts owed to him by Low Tin, Ah Bow, Ah Yuen, Low Haw and Yee Leung. And he added, a "good many owe me for three and four months' lodging and board." Low Tin, Ah Yuen and Yee Leung filed sworn statements and in the process offered details of their own lives and work. Low Tin, who purportedly owed Low Sam $300, stated he borrowed the funds in 1896 to cover losses in the Ung Sang vegetable garden; he claimed a 1/8th ownership interest in that garden. He noted he had lived there three years and had previous vegetable garden experience living and working elsewhere. Yee Leung — who shared that he had known Low Sam for a decade at the time of the filing — purportedly owed him $500 from a $700 loan made in 1895. He stated he used the funds to purchase an interest in Hop Chong laundry on San Pedro Street between First and Second Streets in Los Angeles. In 1897, at the time of the filing, he lived at Hop Chong laundry and still held his 50%interest in the business. He shared that the laundry had grown in the two years from 1895 to 1897; by 1897, he employed nine other men. Low Sam's single request to travel offers valuable clues about individual ties that bind community that can then be traced and connected to create a fuller picture of life in Los Angeles.
Low Sam's experience connects local life to global travels as well as to strategies developed to work in and around laws or sometimes to counter laws directly in the courts. Less than ten years after Low Sam's request, the 1906 earthquake and fire in San Francisco destroyed many federal records and created new opportunities to argue exceptions to restrictive immigration policies. Many others evaded federal agents at borders altogether. Moving into the 20th century, individual immigrants and their families and sponsors routinely consulted immigration lawyers in order to respond, challenge and circumvent the Chinese Exclusion laws. The Huntington'sYou Chung Hong Legal Papers and theLaw Offices of Chow and Sing Records embody this history of advocacy. You Chung "Y.C." Hong's papers, made up of more than 7,600 immigration case files, often contain coaching papers, business partnership lists, tax records and bank statements that were used to verify their rights to enter the U.S. Low Sam's file details the reality that race is formally constructed by policies, laws and practices and is experienced or contested via the community responses to those laws and practices, such as by the work of Y.C. Hong. We invite you to listen to Episode 3 of "Western Edition," which shares more of this history.
Thank you to Linda Bentz of the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California and interns Judy Hong, Annie Li, Wei Pu, Karem Villa and Nancy Zepeda of Cal State LA as well as ICW intern Sally Hy of CSU Fullerton for their research and notes on the NARA files. Thanks also to William Deverell, Katie Dunham, Greg Hise and Jessica Kim for their thoughtful comments.
