Li Sing v. United States

Citations

• 180 U.S. 486
• 21 S. Ct. 449
• 45 L. Ed. 634
• 1901 U.S. LEXIS 1321

Syllabus

<p>Li Sing was a Chinaman who, after residing for years in the United States, returned temporarily to China, taking with him a certificate purporting to have been issued by the imperial government of China, at its consulate in New York, and signed by its consul, stating that he was permitted to return to the United States, that he was entitled to do so, and that he was a wholesale grocer. On his return to the United States by way of Canada, he presented this certificate to the United States collector of customs at Malone, New York, who cancelled it and permitted him to enter the country. Subsequently he was brought before the Commissioner of the United States for the Southern District of New York, charged with having unlawfully entered the United States, being a laborer. At the examination he set up that he had a right to remain here, and that he was a merchant. The Commissioner found that on his departure from the United States he was and had long been a laborer, and ordered his deportation. Held, that the decision of the Collector at Malone was not final, and that by the act of October 1, 1888, c. 1064, the certificate issued to him by the Chinese consul on his departure from the United States was annulled.</p> <p>Fong Yue Ting v. United States, 149 U. S. 698, affirmed and followed, especially to the points: (1) That the provision of the statute which puts the burden of proof upon the alien of rebutting the presumption arising from his having no certificate, as well as the requirement of proof “by at least one credible white witness, that he was a resident of the United States at the time of the passage of the act,” is within the acknowledged power of every legislature to prescribe the evidence which shall be received, and the effect of that evidence in the courts of its own government; (2) that the requirement not allowing the fact of residence here at the time of the passage of the act to be proved solely by the testimony of aliens in a like situation was a cons