Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, Transmitted to Congress, With the Annual Message of the President, December 3, 1888, Part I

No. 616.
Mr. Merrill to Mr. Bayard.

Legation of the United States,
Honolulu, February 24, 1888. (Received March 24.)

No. 174.]

Sir: I have the honor to inclose two copies of regulations regarding the immigration of Chinese into the Hawaiian Kingdom officially published on the 21st instant.

There is a strong, increasing sentiment in this country, especially among the laboring class and merchants not directly interested in sugar plantations, that immigration shall be so regulated as to prevent any permanent increase of the Asiatic population of these islands.

To this end a society, known as the Anti-Asiatic Union, has been recently organized with the avowed purpose of procuring such legislation as will restrict the importation of Chinese and Japanese to the actual requirements of the planters, and to compel the return to their native country of those shipped contract-laborers not willing to renew their labor contracts on the expiration of the original contract. Also to procure the enactment of laws prohibiting the granting of any new licenses for any trade or commerce to Asiatics.

The indications now are that immigration will be one of the important questions for the consideration of the legislature in May next.

I have, etc,

Geo. W. Merrill.

[Inclosure in No. 174.]

Regulations.—By authority.

By virtue of the authority conferred upon me by an act entitled “An act to regulate Chinese immigration,” approved December 20, 1887, I hereby publish, by and with the consent of the cabinet in council, the following regulations:

1. Each application by a Chinese resident in this Kingdom for a permit to enter the Kingdom shall he accompanied by the applicant’s receipt for taxes for the current year; his passenger ticket; his custom-house passport; duplicate copies of photographs snowing full face and profile views of the applicant; and a fee of five dollars. And such applicant shall make it appear to the satisfaction of the minister of foreign affairs that he has resided within the Kingdom for two years, and that he is not a vagrant, criminal, professional beggar, user of opium, or one likely to becomea charge upon the country.

2. Applications for permits to be issued to Chinese women, children, and families, under section 6 of the said act, must be accompanied by a certificate that the women are of good character, or are the wives of Chinese residents in the Kingdom, or that said children or families are such as permits are provided for in said section 6.

3. Section 9 of the said act is as follows: “All permits issued under the provisions of this act are personal and not transferable, and a transfer or attempted transfer shall be deemed to be a cancellation and a forfeiture; and the person making or attempting to make such transfer, and any person aiding or abetting him in so doing, shall be liable, on conviction, to a penalty of two hundred dollars, or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months at hard labor.

Jona. Austin,
Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Foreign Office, Honolulu, February 21, 1888.