Fong Yue Ting v. United States

Fong Yue Ting v. United States, 149 U.S. 698 (1893), decided by the United States Supreme Court on May 15, 1893, was a case challenging provisions in Section 6 of the Geary Act of 1892 that extended and amended the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The provisions in question required Chinese in the United States to obtain certificates of residency and allowed for the arrest and the deportation of Chinese who had failed to obtain these certificates, even if they had not violated any other laws.

The case involved writs of _habeas corpus _ from Fong Yue Ting and two other Chinese citizens residing in New York City who were arrested and detained for not having certificates.

The Supreme Court decision (5 to 3) was in favor of the United States government, upholding the Geary Act and denying the writs of habeas corpus.

Contents

• 1 Background

• 2 Case

• 3 Decision

  • 3.1 Majority opinion

  • 3.2 Brewer's dissent

  • 3.3 Field's dissent

  • 3.4 Fuller's dissent

• 4 Subsequent developments

  • 4.1 Value as precedent for later doctrines in immigration law

• 5 References

• 6 External links

Background

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In 1868, the United States and China entered into the Burlingame Treaty , establishing formal friendly relations between the two countries, and granting China most favored nation status. The treaty encouraged immigration from China, and granted some privileges to citizens of either country residing in the other, but withheld the privilege of naturalization for immigrants from China.

On November 17, 1880, the Burlingame Treaty was amended to suspend but not prohibit immigration from China. The amendment was called the Treaty Regulating Immigration from China, and historians refer to it as the Angell Treaty of 1880 . The prefix stated: "The United States, because of the constantly increasing immigration of Chinese labourers to the territory of the United States and the embarrassments consequent upon such immigration now desires to negotiate a modification of the existing Treaties which shall not be in direct contravention to their spirit."

In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed, forbidding (for ten years) the immigration of skilled and unskilled laborers from China to the United States. The rights of prior immigrants were not significantly amended. An 1884 Amendment to the Chinese Exclusion Act required Chinese citizens to obtain re-entry permits if they wished to return after temporarily leaving the United States. On October 1, 1888, the United States government passed the Scott Act . Authored by William Lawrence Scott of Pennsylvania , the act was signed into law by United States President Grover Cleveland on October 1, 1888.

The act forbade re-entry of Chinese immigrants to the United States. This went against the privileges that the Burlingame Treaty gave Chinese immigrants to the United States. The 1888 statute was upheld in _Chae Chan Ping v. United States _.

In 1892, as the ten-year period for the original Chinese Exclusion Act was scheduled to expire, the exclusion was extended for another 10 years with the Geary Act . The Geary Act, however, included a number of additional provisions affecting the lives of Chinese already living in the United States. One key set of provisions shifted the burden of proof for demonstrating the right to be in the United States on to the Chinese resident.

The chief enforcement mechanism for this change was "certificates of residence". Chinese already in the United States were required to possess "certificates of residence" that served as proof that they had entered the United States legally and had the right to remain in the country. The certificates of residence contained the name, age, local residence, occupation, and photograph of the applicant.

The following requirements for the certificate were relevant:

• The Chinese resident needed two white witnesses to testify to the person's immigration status in order to be issued the certificate.
• All Chinese laborers currently in the United States were required to obtain the certification within a year of the passage of the law, with a duplicate kept in the office of the Collector of Internal Revenue.

The following enforcement penalties gave teeth to the requirement for a certificate:

• Any Chinese laborer within the United States without this certificate of residence was "deemed and adjudged to be unlawfully in the United States" and could be arrested and forced to do hard labor, and be deported after a year.
• Penalties were prescribed for falsification of information on the certificates.
• Chinese were denied bail in _habeas corpus _ proceedings. In particular, that meant that any Chinese detained on account of not having certificates could not be released on bail.

In particular, possession of the certificate itself became a requirement of law, regardless of whether the person had entered unlawfully.

Case

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The case in question involved petitions by three Chinese citizens residing in the United States, each of whom had not successfully obtained certificates of residence though with slight differences:

• The first petitioner claimed that he had arrived in the United States from China in or before 1879. For more than a year, he had resided in New York City . He was arrested by the marshal for not having a certificate of residence and had never applied for one.
• The second petitioner's situation was similar to the first, except that the Chinese citizen had been shown to a judge, who had agreed to let the marshal hold him.
• The third petitioner had applied for a certificate of residence but had not been granted one because all the witnesses he could secure were Chinese, and the Geary Act required white witnesses. He was arrested and detained after failing to obtain the certificate.

In all three cases, the petitioner (the Chinese citizen) alleged that his arrest and detention were without due process of law, and that Section 6 of the Geary Act, which required a "white witness" and had been used to justify the arrest and detention, was unconstitutional and void.

Decision

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Majority opinion

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The case was decided in favor of the United States government by a margin of 5 to 3, with the majority opinion delivered by Justice Horace Gray .

(Justice John Marshall Harlan was abroad at the time and thus was unable to participate. ) The opinion discussed similarities and differences with past cases. Some of the cases discussed, and the key points of similarity and difference, are noted below:

• The main cited precedent for the decision was _Chae Chan Ping v. United States _ (1889, also known as the Chinese Exclusion Case), where the Supreme Court unanimously sided with the government. According to the Court's opinion on the Chinese Exclusion Case written by Stephen Johnson Field , the power to exclude foreigners was an "incident of sovereignty", therefore Congress could

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