Unsung America. Prerna Lal
and return to China, to take care of poverty-stricken or sick Chinese, and to send their dead back to China for burial.
As the Chinese population grew in the United States and they faced more discrimination, the CCBA got more politically involved. The Six Companies hired lawyers to litigate against discriminatory laws, hired personnel to protect Chinese businesses, campaigned for higher wages and fewer hours for Chinese workers, and smuggled thousands of Chinese across the US-Mexico border between 1882 and 1930.23
The Chinese Six Companies led the fight against the Geary Act by posting flyers in Chinatowns urging the 110,000 Chinese in the United States not to register for the “Dog Tag Law.” The Six Companies also raised funds to finance litigation against the Geary Act. The campaign was enormously successful and became the largest organized act of civil disobedience in United States history. Over 93,445 Chinese didn’t register, thereby risking arrest and detention.24
The Chinese Six Companies filed a lawsuit to challenge the Geary Act on the basis that hard labor and deportation constituted cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. They also argued that the law violated the Fifth and Sixth Amendments by imprisoning people to do hard labor without trial. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court disagreed and ruled that as a sovereign nation, the United States could choose to detain and deport any person or race.25 This provided the legal justification for the immigrant detention and deportation regime that exists today.
While the courts upheld the detention and deportation of undocumented Chinese under the Geary Act, the federal government soon realized that it did not have the enforcement capacity to arrest, detain, and deport about 100,000 undocumented Chinese immigrants. Though they did not win in court, the Chinese Six Companies won through civil disobedience, by encouraging people not to register. Therefore, the Geary Act became an unfunded mandate. Over time, the Chinese Six Companies filed lawsuits to carve out and broaden exceptions to the Geary Act for Chinese merchants, students, and family members of Chinese Americans. Congress finally removed these restrictions in 1943, during World War II, in a diplomatic gesture towards its ally, China. However, the remaining restrictions provided the structural basis for detentions and deportations that continue to this day.
Beyond the system of detention and deportation of undocumented migrants, the registration cards and requirements imposed by the Geary Act have carried over into present times. Present-day immigration laws still require immigrants to register with the United States government and inform the government within ten days after moving to a new address. Lawful permanent residents must carry an unexpired registration certificate, popularly known as a Green Card. These cards must be renewed every ten years, even though the permanent resident status itself does not expire. Even today we challenge “show me your papers” laws in states, such as Arizona and Alabama, mandates which the federal government has had on the books for generations.
Kaoru Yamataya
By the early 1900s, the United States had established the power to detain and deport all noncitizens, even without a trial. Deportation served as a social filter by restricting eligibility for citizenship and fundamentally shaping the social composition of the United States. The government enacted provisions to exclude entry to individuals who were poor, involved in sex work, or likely to become a public charge (dependent on the government for assistance). These provisions were primarily used to deny agency to immigrant women as independent economic actors. Individuals were deportable if they were deemed to become a public charge within three years of their entry.
Fifteen-year-old Kaoru Yamataya sought entry into the United States on July 11, 1901, in Seattle, Washington.26 She was allowed to land, but was arrested four days later, along with her fellow traveler, Masataro Yamataya, who was most likely her trafficker. Ten days after her arrest, immigration officials convened in a hearing presided over by non-judges, in English, a language that Yamataya did not understand. Board of Special Inquiry found that she was a person likely to become a public charge, which meant that she could be deported. They probably made this judgment because Yamataya was visibly pregnant at the time and did not seem to be married or to have relatives in the United States.
At this time in immigration history, targeting women was commonplace. The growing concern over premarital sex, single motherhood, and what was deemed to be inappropriate sexual behavior helped to shape immigration policies that would disproportionately exclude and deport immigrants who were women or girls.27 Unwed mothers faced deportation, because in this era pregnancy and morality were issues that seemed relevant to good citizenship. Women who were pregnant or suspected of participating in prostitution were the most likely to be deported. Women who arrived at US ports of entry without partners were suspected of coming for immoral purposes, such as engaging in sex work.
The Board of Special Inquiry decided that Yamataya should remain in custody while they requested an order of deportation from the Secretary of the Treasury, which was in charge of immigration enforcement at the time. The Board intended to return her to Japan at the expense of the vessel that had brought her to the U.S. Two months after her arrival, Yamataya gave birth to a baby boy. Unfortunately, he passed away from pneumonia while still in immigration custody.
But Yamataya hired legal counsel and fought back. She contended that she came to the United States to further her education, and that she did not engage in sex work.28 Yamataya’s lawyers contended that she was entitled to due process as someone on US soil, and that the law used by the Board to order her deportation was unconstitutional because it did not provide her with a proper hearing. Due process generally requires notice of allegations, the opportunity to be heard by a judicial officer, and a trial for certain types of judicial proceedings. Technically, Yamataya never received proper due process because non-judicial officials had presided over the hearing, and because it had been conducted in a language she did not understand.
The US Supreme Court decided that the hearing the Board of Special Inquiry had given her was sufficient and ordered Yamataya deported. However, in doing so, the Court ruled that the government could not deport a noncitizen without affording them procedural due process protections, including the right to a hearing. In so doing, the Court clarified that individuals have a right to a hearing even if they enter the country unlawfully and do not establish long-term residence.
Yamataya v. Fisher established the concept of due process for noncitizens, and the decision opened the door for noncitizens to appeal procedural irregularities in their deportation hearings. While this did not help Yamataya, her refusal to accept the questionable actions of men regarding her body and autonomy helped establish a baseline for granting due process to millions of people. Even though deportation is primarily enacted as a punishment, immigrants facing removal are subjected to similar administrative law procedures, which are quite limited in nature. Immigration courts are kangaroo courts, because they are under the purview of the politically motivated Department of Justice, therefore the autonomy and authority of the so-called “immigration judges” is quite questionable.
Yamataya was likely a survivor of sexual violence, at a time when the United States did not have laws that could qualify her for immigration status as a victim of violence. The government’s lack of concern about her likely exposure to sexual violence parallels the current lack of concern for Central American women seeking asylum at the US-Mexico border. If caught by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents, migrant women are often deported to Mexico’s violent border towns in the middle of the night.29 Rape along the US-Mexico border is so common that it is reluctantly accepted as a potential part of the price for admission to America, and many migrant women take birth control pills before making the dangerous journey north.30
The “likely to become a public charge” grounds under which Yamataya was deported continues to shape federal and state immigration policy. The 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, eliminated access for lawful permanent residents to many social welfare benefits, such as Medicare, Medicaid, Supplemental Social Security Income, and food stamps.31 Some of the harsh provisions were later removed after protests from advocates, but confusion about access to benefits is so widespread in immigrant communities, that contrary to popular perception, most forgo receiving any form of assistance. In this manner, poverty is still used as a device to marginalize, if not outright exclude people who are perceived unfit for