The Angel Island Immigration Station (1910-1940), in the San Francisco Bay near Alcatraz, was the Ellis Island of the US west coast, the main place immigrants from Asia were processed to enter the country. It is infamous in Asian American circles.
Immigrants at Ellis Island, mostly White, went through in a matter of hours, whether they got to enter to country or not. About the worst thing you hear about Ellis Island is that people had their names changed or misspelled.
Immigrants at Angel Island, mostly Asian, often stayed for weeks or months. Some never made it out alive, taking their own life.
L.D. Cio remembers Angel Island as:
“a prison with scarcely any supply of air or light. Miserably crowded together and poorly fed, the unfortunate victims are treated by the jailers no better than beasts. The worst is that they are not allowed to carry on correspondence with the outside.”
People were sometimes thrown into solitary confinement for weeks until they were able to “calm down”.
On its walls, people wrote Chinese poetry like this:
“Wait till the day I become successful and fulfill my wish! I will not speak of love when I level the immigration station.”
It was hardest on women who were separated from their children. Their children sometimes were allowed to enter the country while they were sent back.
Officials said they needed to quarantine Asians because of communicable diseases “prevalent among aliens of oriental countries.” Yet the health care there was terrible.
Some 175,000 Chinese, among others, came through Angel Island. About 75% to 80% were kept there till they could prove who they were. This was determined through long interrogations. For example:
Q: Is your house one story or two stories?
A: There is an attic.
Q: Are there steps to the attic?
A: Yes.
Q: How many?
A: Twelve.
Q: How do you know?
A: I counted them, because I was told you would ask me questions like these.
Q: Then you were coached in the answers to be given? You rehearsed and memorized the information to make us think you are the son of Wong Hing?
There were in fact paper-son schools in Hong Kong that coached people. Biographical information was bought and sold, sometimes by the officials at Angel Island itself.
Paper sons: From 1882 to 1965 the main way US law allowed people from China to enter the country was to prove they were the son or daughter of a US citizen. After the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco burned down city hall and its records, this created a huge opening for fake sons and daughters – paper sons. The government knew this, thus the long interrogations.
As you might guess, the process was hugely corrupt. For the right price, an official might fake, change or destroy records. Officials grew rich while immigrants spent years paying off bribes. On top of that, there was, at least at one point, a smuggling ring.
This process meant that sometimes people who belonged in the US were sent back while those who did not were let in.
– Abagond, 2015.
Source: “The Chinese in America” (2003) by Iris Chang.
See also:
- Welcome to Asian American History Month 2015
- Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882
- paper sons
- Bhagat Singh Thind
- The term “illegal immigrant”
- The perpetual foreigner stereotype
556
..I have long been intrigued by the Angel Island detainee stories, yet I did not hear much about the bribes by certain officials (not surprised though) and it’s a flippin’ shame how they treated these folks who were completely, vulnerably in their corrupt hands. Their treatment at “Angel” Island made the process at Ellis Island seem like a walk in the park-ironically enough, if you visit Angel Island now, a nice park for walking in along with places to picnic is what a lot of people actually use that area for these days!
LikeLike
@Kiwi,
What did your high school say about Angel Island? What did YOU learn?
I am sure that metro NY / NJ schools take mandatory field trips to Ellis Island and the DC/MD/VA schools to Holocaust Museum in DC. Do any schools in the Bay area take trips to Angel Island?
I have taken visitors to NYC to Ellis Island, but I have not yet visited Angel Island.
Have you been to Angel Island?
Was just thinking — Angel Island is often called the “Ellis Island of the West”. But that is actually whitewashing it. Notice we cannot say that Ellis Island was the “Angel Island of the East”.
LikeLike
This is how my great uncle (grandfather’s elder brother) made his living in the USA for 30-40 years – arranging for the trade of tens of thousands of paper son documents and bio information.
In 1946, he took a trip back to China (the first in nearly 50 years) and the whole town had a huge banquet in his honour. Later, when I was a child, I used to see people point at me saying that I was part of the family that helped bring their family over. It was not until I got older that I understood what they were talking about.
LikeLike
@Abagond,
Found the same picture you have above, but without the central book crease. It makes it easier to see the white immigration inspector. Maybe we could replace the photo either on this post or the post on paper sons.
Also, I know that not only Chinese entered through Angel Island. There were tens of thousands of Japanese, as well as some Koreans, Filipinos and others. Did you find much information on them?
LikeLike
@ Jefe
I updated the post. Thanks!
LikeLike
@ Jefe
It was not just the Chinese, as you say, but Iris Chang and even Ronald Takaki (my main sources on these matters) mainly just talk about the Chinese. Presumably the non-Chinese were processed in a matter of hours and so there is not much to say about it.
LikeLike
Well a country has a right to decide what kind of people it wants to live in it. If America didn’t want Chinese immigrants at the time, it was its right as a sovereign nation to say so. Being able to set your own immigration policy is part of being an independent nation.
LikeLike
Learned something new today in addition to watching a Youtube video. These people were subjected to humiliating examinations and suffered the violation of their human rights. It was sad to read this and watch that video.
LikeLike
Has Bobby M every actually read the Chinese Exclusion Act?
It is still the only U.S. immigration law that banned a race of people from entering at all. It was not just about banning Chinese immigrants as Bobby M suggested.
In 1868, the Burlingame Treaty actually expanded Chinese immigration. In 1882, the USA banned all Chinese period (except for students, merchants), even if they were citizens of other countries; even if they were just partially of Chinese descent. The ban was not on Chinese Nationals, but on people who had Chinese ancestry / blood. It caused families to be split up for decades or until death.
China did not ban Americans from entering China at that time.
LikeLike
I know that the Nazis killed 11 million people, 5 million of them Jewish. I don’t think they sent them to playgrounds. Please refrain from ad hominem attacks. I just believe that nations have the absolute and unrestricted right to decide who they allow to immigrate. They have the right to base immigration restrictions on race, ethnicity, religion, skills, nationality, disability, lunacy, disease, political beliefs, age, etc…
That is an important part of national autonomy and sovereignty and self-determination.
LikeLike
But then again, policies also have consequences.
http://news.yahoo.com/heartache-japans-real-life-40-old-virgins-071715347.html
LikeLike
Hi King,
I found that article very interesting, but I am at odds to figure out how it is connected to Angel Island or to the immigrants that passed through there. Or if it is about national policies, what national policies resulted in the growing situation in Japan?
LikeLike
@Mary Burrell
Would you be kind to share what video you watched to learn about what happened at Angel Island?
US history books glorify Ellis Island, together with the Statue of Liberty, as the symbol representing America’s rich immigrant heritage. Yet they are largely silent on Angel Island. Apart from Americans who came through Angel Island or their children, it is well known only to very small niche of historians. Many residents and visitors to greater New York / New Jersey have been to Ellis Island and the snazzy museum there. Hardly any visitor or resident to the San Francisco Bay area have been to Angel Island, even those who had parents / grandparents who passed through there.
What is the message taught?
I have been to Ellis Island in NY harbour several times, as well as the museum discussing Sulllivan Island in Charleston, SC, where many Africans first entered the USA in the 1700s-1800s, but even I have never been to Angel Island (despite having paper son / daughter grandparents and Aunts).
LikeLike
It’s both unsettling and enlightening to know that my native hometown of the Bay Area has the longest and deepest histories of Asian American oppression. The first drug epidemic in American history was the Chinese bringing Opium to America after the 1849 Gold Rush. Opium was originally outlawed because white men feared single Asian men would use Opium to seduce white women. Prior to Opium being outlawed, all drugs were legal in the United States. To this day, there is still much Asian American oppression in the Bay Area. One of the worst neighborhoods in San Francisco of the Tenderloin has a large ghettoized Asian American population.
LikeLike
I almost always stay in Tenderloin when I visit SF.
LikeLike
@SanFranpsycho415
Wow. I did not even know that.
LikeLike
..True there are large ghettoized areas of the “TL” with plenty of Asian folks, but it pretty much has a large population of all flavors and walks of life in it as well. From the “ladies o’ the night”, to “those dudes” who are always, always tryin’ to sell you their latest CD, to the inevitable fights that happen right in the middle o’ the street, the Tenderloin district has it all! lol
Sidenote: There are good places inside there to get a sweet deal on clothes and stereo equipment too, as there is always that one store on the block constantly claiming to be “going out of business” and having a clearance sale!
LikeLike