Max Kohler and the Fight for Chinese American Citizenship

The Chinese exclusion acts proceed, first of all, on the theory that our country and its laborers should be protected against the cheap labor of China. In this aspect the question is in its nature one that arises, though perhaps in less marked degree, with respect to immigrants from many other countries. General legislation, not alone applicable to Chinese persons, would be here more properly in order, and the result would be that we would not then run counter to such fundamental principles of democratic government as find expression in our Declaration of Independence in asserting the equality of all men, and in our existing statutes in proclaiming the inherent right of all men and races to come to reside here and become American citizens. Sec. 1999 Revised Statutes, United States.) Nor can any one explain why the black man should enjoy, all, the "rights of man," and the man whose skin is yellow be treated by the law as an outcast because of such difference of shade. Moreover, in their special application to Chinese persons, the question arises whether we are not sacrificing trade interests of enormous magnitude, involving millions of dollars per annum, in order to continue on our statute books ineffective prohibitions. In any event, it is apparent from an investigation of the workings of our present law that its real aims and ostensible purposes are obscured through faultily drafted laws, so that non-laboring Chinese merchants are, in fact, in chief measure excluded by laws aimed only at laborers. But, whatever views may be entertained as to the propriety of excluding Chinese laborers, or even all Chinese persons, no one familiar with the facts can Justify our present disgraceful exclusion procedure and its workings. It is without parallel in its injustice, brutality, and inhumanity. Chinese persons, who have violated no law, municipal or moral, or, rather, persons appearing to be Chinese subjects-for they are as likely as not to be American citizens of Chinese extraction, and may not have left the country for years, or ever-are now constantly arrested and are treated, not merely as felons by our laws, but every restraint upon executive action embodied in our Federal and State Constitutions as Bills of Rights, for the defense even of felons, is here ignored and violated, notwithstanding the fact that we proudly point to these clauses, safeguarding individual liberty, as our dearest Anglo-Saxon heritage from the centuries past. A careful study of this procedure system convinces me that the system devised for the expulsion of the Moors from Spain and of the Jews from Russia in our day, which have aroused the indignation of humanity, are gentle and humane compared with the barbarities of our existing “American” methods for the deportation of alleged Chinese persons. That all this has been done by us in bold and unconcealed violation of our National faith, as expressed in solemn treaties, can scarcely palliate our actions. Of course the argument that because we once broke our National agreement, we are justified in doing so again, is beneath notice.