Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation

By Bill Ong Hing, Professor of Law, University of San Francisco.

The story of undocumented immigration in the Chinese American community is well known. Because of the exclusion laws, many Chinese entered the United States under false citizenship claims. A Chinese laborer might assert, for example, that he was born in San Francisco and that his birth certificate was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake. Then he would claim, after various trips to China, that his wife there had given birth to children (usually sons) who automatically derived U.S. citizenship. In fact, the children were often fictitious, and the few immigration slots were given or sold to others in China. They came to be known as “paper sons.” Thousands of others, including wives, sneaked across the Canadian or Mexican border.

For the past 11 years, Elizabeth and Joe Chan have conveyed the story of Angel Island immigrants to thousands of visitors.  Renowned for their thorough knowledge of this historic site, Eliz and Joe provide a comprehensive and compassionate picture of this unique American immigration station. This is the first in a series of articles about the volunteers and staff at the U.S. Immigration Station, Angel Island.

by Bill Ong Hing
Professor of Law, University of San Francisco

Those of us familiar with the history of Angel Island as a detention center know that the impetus began with the Chinese exclusion laws. Chinese seeking to enter the country were subject to close scrutiny. An individual was not excludable if he or she had a valid claim to U.S. citizenship or if a migrant was entering as a student or merchant. From 1910 to 1940, some 175,000 Chinese were confined - often for months and years at a time - in Angel Island's bleak wooden barracks, where immigration inspectors conducted interrogations.  Those Chinese who could not establish eligibility to enter were sent back to China, having come within what today is a short ferry ride to San Francisco. For some, the frustration and humiliation were so painful that they committed suicide.

On January 21, 2012, over 50 people gathered at San Francisco's Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California (JCCCNC) to hear a lecture by Charles Egan, professor of Chinese at SF State University, on recent discoveries of poems of Angel Island immigrants. Professor Egan was able to decipher Chinese poems, which were obscured on the detention barrack walls. Japanese and Korean poems written about Angel Island and on the immigrant experience were found by reviewing microfilm of vernacular press of the 1910s to 1940s.