If They Don't Bring Their Women Here

by Peffer, George

• ISBN13: 9780252067778
• ISBN10: 0252067770
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-08-01
• Publisher: Univ of Illinois Pr

Summary

"Seven years before the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 comprehensively disqualified all members of China's laboring class from immigration status, the Page Law sought to stem the tide of Chinese prostitutes entering the United States. Yet during these seven years it was not just prostitutes but all Chinese females who encountered at best hostility and at worst expulsion when they reached the ""Golden Door."" In this first detailed account of Chinese American women's lives in the preexclusion era, George Anthony Peffer investigates how administrative agencies and federal courts enforced immigration laws. Peffer documents the habeas corpus trials in which the wives and daughters of Chinese laborers were required to prove their status as legal immigrants or be returned to China. He also surveys the virulently anti- Chinese coverage these trials and the issue of Chinese immigration received in California newspapers, confirming that Chinatown's prostitution industry so dominated the popular imagination as to render other classes of female immigrants all but invisible. In the words of one immigration judge, the United States remained favorable to Chinese immigration in the preexclusion period ""if they don't bring their women here."" This important study amplifies the voices of immigrant women who did not fit into the preconceived categories American officials created and establishes a place for them within the historiographic framework of Chinese American studies."

Table of Contents

Foreword	vii
Roger Daniels
Preface	ix
Acknowledgments	xiii
Invisible Women and Untold Stories	1	(11)
A Comparison of Chinese Immigrant Communities	12	(16)
A Stop on the Road to Exclusion	28	(15)
The Hong Kong Consuls: Erecting Barriers	43	(14)
The San Francisco Port Authorities and Judges: Reluctant Liberators	57	(16)
The San Francisco Press: Catalyst and Mirror	73	(14)
The Census Enumerators: Completing a Cycle of Invisibility	87	(14)
The Task of Restoring Female Visibility	101	(14)
Appendix: Documents and Tables	115	(8)
Notes	123	(28)
Bibliography	151	(8)
Index	159