The Geary Act: From the Standpoint of a Christian Chinese

Background: Jee Gam was a missionary worker, a court interpreter, and a community leader who opposed passage of the Geary Act, which would extend the Chinese Exclusion Act for ten years and required all Chinese in the United States to obtain certificates of residence or face deportation. His essay opposing the Geary Act was published in a San Francisco missionary journal in 1892.

During the last six months this act has been more talked about than any other question in America. You can hardly take up a daily paper, a magazine, or any religious paper, without finding something about the Geary Law. … I have been requested to write on it, and have with great reluctance consented, because it is a hard question to handle. Yet I feel it my duty to try.

I am a Chinaman and a Christian. I am not any less Chinese for being a follower of Christ. My love to Jesus has intensified rather than belittled my love for my native country. I am proud of China, for it is a great country. I admire her, for she has a wonderful future. ...

I am in some sense also an American, for I have lived in America almost twice as long as in China. I love this country. I teach my children who are native-born Americans to sing the National hymns. And just as I rejoice in whatever is honorable to America, and commend her example to my countrymen, so I am pained when unjust and oppressive laws are permitted to be placed upon her statute books. Such a law as the Geary Act seems to me to be one which dishonors America, as well as injures my countrymen and native land. . . 

Now the Geary Act is even worse, for it not only prohibits the Chinese laborers from entering into the United States, but compels the deportation of those that are lawfully here, which is virtually an act of war. So this Geary Act is an oppression of the weak. China is a great and powerful nation, but not just now in condition to fight a power like America. At any rate, America thinks so, and it looks to us cowardly for her to take undue advantage of a weaker nation. We all despise a man who stabs another in the back; how much more despicable when the person so attacked is weaker than he!

See how this law injures China.

1. It discriminates against her subjects. It says all Chinese laborers must register or be deported, but says this of no others. If America is fair in her dealing, she ought never for a moment to allow discrimination to exist within her borders. Her laws ought to be applicable to all people, regardless of nationality. To single out the despised Chinese, the only people who hold no votes, shows cowardliness. Would America venture to enact a similar law against any of the European powers?

And now, what harm is in the registration law? Why do the Chinese object? Every American has to register. These have been the questions and assertions of many friends. My answer to these is as follows: An American if he fails to register forfeits only the right of voting at that particular election. For that no harm can come to him. But there is a vast difference in the Geary registration, for it means that the Chinese must register, or be forcibly removed from this country. So one registration is voluntary, while the other is compelled. In other words, the former law makes a person a free man, the other law makes one a slave, a criminal, or even a dog. For the only class that are required to give photographs are the criminals, and the only animal that must wear a tag is a dog. The Chinese decline to be counted in with either of these classes, so they refuse to register, and I do not blame them;

2. A registration paper will add trouble to its owner instead of protection. A laborer will have to carry the paper with him wherever he goes. Suppose he is in a strange town, and some hoodlums should play the part of officers, and should demand the showing of his paper, and, when he complies, suppose they should immediately tear it to pieces. Now, how can this man prove his loss? He has no witness but himself, and the Court will not believe him unless he has some white witness to corroborate his testimony. Consequently, his request for a renewal will be denied. Not only so, but they must charge him with having sold his papers. If he gets clear once, when he goes into the next town he is liable to be arrested again, and he will have no rest until he is deported.

3. This Act withdraws some sacred rights such as in the Declaration of Independence are declared to be inalienable. The right to a free, untrammelled pursuit of happiness, the right of habeas corpus, the right to be adjudged innocent until proven guilty. The Geary Act says, when a Chinese is arrested under the provision of this Act, he shall be adjudged to be unlawfully within the United States, unless he shall establish by affirmative proof, to the satisfaction of such Justice, Judge or Commissioner, his lawful right to remain here. Now if that law which says every person arrested and charged with a crime is presumed to be innocent until he is proven guilty will hold good for a white man, why not for a Chinaman also? In other words, the people must make out a case against the accused before he can be convicted of the crime charged. If he choose to be silent, the law says that is his privilege, and judgment must not be entered against him for doing so. This also should apply to the Chinese as well as other people, but the Geary Act says No, and therefore it is un-American, barbarous and inhuman. It is unchristian, for it is contrary to the teaching of Christ. . . . 

Our sincere thanks are due to all our Christian friends. Their sympathy and prayers have greatly comforted us; and may God overrule all injustice and wrong to His glory, and the final triumph of the right!

Source: Our Bethany 3, no. 4 (February 1892): 5. Reprinted in: Judy Yung, Gordon H. Chang, and Him Mark Lai, Chinese American Voices from the Gold Rush to the Present (University of California Press, 2006)