Background Information
Chin Bark See applied for permission to immigrate to the United States
in 1922. He was the son of an American citizen, Chin Dean Bate, who
was born in the United States. (See the Affidavit, dated October
24, 1921.)
In her 1992 book, Chinatown, Gwen Kinkead gives some background
on the procedures that immigrants experienced at the time:
Many residents were "paper sons," illegal aliens with false identification
papers. Any child born to an American citizen was automatically also
a citizen, even if the child was born in China. Laborers who
had entered the country before the Exclusion Act and had obtained
citizenship, or merchants who were exempted from the act, invariably
told the U.S. Immigration Bureau when they returned from visits to
China that they'd fathered sons there, whether they had or not. That
opened up a slot for another Chinese, often a nephew or cousin, or
perhaps a stranger from another district, to pose as the son.
Immigration grilled Chinese entering the U.S.--with so many originating
near Canton, it became expert in Cantonese village life and family
genealogies. "How many steps from the peach tree in back of your
house to the village shrine?" inspectors asked. "How many sons
did your mother's aunt have?" Paper sons studied these typical
questions in their "coaching books," bought with their fake birth
certificates, and had ready answers. Hundreds managed to fool
Immigration and take up residence under false names this way.
|
