Letter from the Treasury Department to Attorney Walter S. Carter about Chinese Student
9/28/1899
Add to Favorites:
Add all page(s) of this document to activity:
Add only page 1 to activity:
Add only page 2 to activity:
Add only page 3 to activity:
Certain Federal agencies were particularly active in enforcing the Chinese exclusion laws. Initially the Customs Service took the lead because of the maritime nature of immigration. In 1900 the Office of the Superintendent of Immigration, which had been established in the Department of the Treasury in 1891, became the chief agency responsible for implementing Federal regulations mandated by the Chinese exclusion laws. Both the Chinese Bureau within the Customs Service and the Chinese Division of the INS employed "Chinese" inspectors, people designated to enforce the Chinese exclusion laws. Immigration-related decisions made by these Federal officials were sometimes appealed to Federal courts, which also heard criminal cases involving Chinese alleged to be living in the United States illegally. This document is featured in "The Chinese Exclusion Act: Researching in the National Archives," available on iBooks.
This letter includes an enclosure of a letter from Walter S. Carter to the Honorable Lyman J. Gage, Secretary of the Treasury, requesting he waive technicalities in the application for the Chinese student. Carter argued that the Chinese Exclusion Act was for the purpose of preventing Chinese laborers from coming to the United States and the student was not a laborer.
This letter includes an enclosure of a letter from Walter S. Carter to the Honorable Lyman J. Gage, Secretary of the Treasury, requesting he waive technicalities in the application for the Chinese student. Carter argued that the Chinese Exclusion Act was for the purpose of preventing Chinese laborers from coming to the United States and the student was not a laborer.
Transcript
Mr. Walter S. Carter,Attorney-at-Law
96 Broadway, New York, N.Y Sir:
Replying to your letter of the 25th instant, in relation to the case of a young Chinese student, who seeks admission to this country upon a certificate not in strict conformity with the requirements of law, you are advised that, it having been ascertained that the applicant in procuring the certificate acted upon the advice of the United States Consul General at Singapore, the Collector of Customs at New York has been authorized to admit the Chinese person upon the recipe of a bond conditioned for the production of a proper certificate. Respectfully yours, Acting Secretary.
Hon. Lyman J. Gage,
Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, Washington.
My dear Mr. Secretary:- My friend and neighbor, Rev. S.L.Baldwin, D.D., Recording Secretary of the missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, called at my house in Brooklyn last evening, regarding the case of a young Chinaman, who has come here to study medicine in the medical school of the University of Michigan, but in whose papers, I understand, there is some technical flaw. Dr. Baldwin said he would probably have to go to Washington, regarding the case, and asked me if I knew you. I told him that, thirty years ago, more or less, I knew you quite well, but that I had not seen you but once since I left Chicago, in 1872. I told him, at any rate you were still enough of a Methodist to know perfectlywell who he was, and that no endorsement of mine would help him much.
He writes me to-day, however, asking me to write you, which, of course, I gladly do. Dr. Baldwin has spent most of his ministerial life in China, and if we ever have a Chinese bishop, he will certainly be chosen. Any statement he may make to you, regarding his young Chinese friend can be absolutely depended upon, and I hope you can see your way clear to waive present technicalities and let the young man go to his studies at Ann Harbor. The Exclusion Act, I believe, is for the purpose of preventing Chinese laborers from coming here; this young man is not a laborer in any sense, but a student, seeking to equip himself for a profession and then returning to his home for the purpose of practicing it.
Splendid is the roll of names of the secretaries of the Treasury of the United States. As an old friend, let me express the pleasure it gives me to see your name upon it.
Very truly yours,
This primary source comes from the Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
National Archives Identifier: 19086646
Full Citation: Letter from the Treasury Department to Attorney Walter S. Carter Informing Him that the New York Collector of Customs had been Authorized to Admit a Chinese Student Seeking Admission to the United States to Study Medicine at the University of Michiga; 9/28/1899; Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Record Group 85. [Online Version, https://www.docsteach.org/documents/document/letter-treasury-department-attorney-walter-s-carter-about-chinese-student, April 25, 2024]Rights: Public Domain, Free of Known Copyright Restrictions. Learn more on our privacy and legal page.