Chinese-American Genealogy: Understanding the History

Recently I watched a webinar on Chinese-American Genealogy by Alice Kane of the New England Historical and Genealogical Society. It had a plethora of wonderful information, and fully proved that understanding the history is critical to genealogical research. 

Many Chinese immigrants came from the Siyi region, and included the former counties of Taishan, Enping, Kaiping, Xinhui in the Pearl River Delta of southern Guangdong province. They mainly departed from Guangzhou, but also departed from Macao and Hong Kong.

Migration influences included the Taiping Rebellion, famine, drought, economic failures and the lure of the American Gold Rush. The Gold Rush and the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad drew many Chinese laborers, who may have made multiple trips back and forth between China and the U.S. as sojourner workers.  

After completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869 there was increasing competition for work between Chinese American and European laborers that led to violence, discrimination, and legislation against the Chinese. Most prominent among these acts was the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act which prohibited Chinese laborers from entering the U.S. and barred those within the U.S. from naturalization. Those currently in America had to obtain certificates of re-entry to be able to leave and come back. Merchants, diplomats, and students could still enter the U.S., but were closely scrutinized. Restrictive acts continued, and included requiring Chinese in the U.S. to carry a resident’s permit, preventing Chinese from testifying in court, and denying bail in habeas corpus cases. Relief wasn’t in sight until 1943, when the Exclusion Act was repealed. Following acts in 1952 & 1965 abolished the quota of only 105 Chinese a year, and switched focus to an emphasis on an immigrant’s skills and relation to U.S. citizens. From 1959-1966 the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), operated the Chinese Confession Program to curb illegal Chinese immigration. It asked Chinese residents in U.S. to confess their illegal entry in return for legalizing their resident status.

The destructive fires from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake proved beneficial to Chinese immigrants in that it destroyed documents. A Chinese male entering the U.S. could claim he was born in San Francisco prior to 1906, or he could claim to be a “paper son” of a U.S. citizen. Paper sons or paper daughters is a term used to refer to Chinese people that were born in China who illegally immigrated to the United States by purchasing fraudulent documentations which stated that they were blood relatives to Chinese Americans who had citizenships in the United States (Wikipedia).

Chinese immigrants did not face an easy entry. Their answers from interrogations were checked closely for consistency. Chinese immigrants to San Francisco were first detained on ships, then when shipping companies complained about delays, a detention facility was used on the docks, then later Angel Island was used from 1910-1940 ; it became known as the Ellis Island of the West.  A fire in 1940 closed the facilities and the detention center moved to San Francisco.

Examinations dragged on for weeks, months, and even years; some simply returned to China, others committed suicide.

Joy