File No. 838.111/56.]
The Acting Secretary of State to the British Ambassador.
Washington, February 16, 1912.
Excellency: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your note of the 8th instant, in which you communicate, as under instructions [Page 534] to do so, the circumstances of a situation that has arisen in Haiti by virtue of the intention of the Haitian Government to enforce certain laws precluding Syrians in that country from engaging in commerce, and that His British Majesty’s Consul-General at Port au Prince has been instructed to make strong representations in protest in behalf of certain British interests disadvantageously affected. You express the hope that this Government will use its influence with the Haitian Government to induce it to abandon the policy it has entered upon, and you state, finally, that His Majesty’s Government cannot submit to the withdrawal by the Haitian Government of the trading licenses that have been granted such Syrians as are British subjects.
In reply to your excellency I have the honor to say that after mature deliberation on the matter this Government, while always desirous of co-operating with His British Majesty’s Government in every way possible, regrets to say that in this case it cannot see its way clear to take the action which His Majesty’s Government suggests. This Government does not perceive upon what grounds it would be justified, in view of the applicable principles of international law, in disputing the right of Haiti to exclude from its territory persons classed as undesirable by its local law upon avowed considerations of economic and political necessity. And I would observe in this connection that while the present attempt at the enforcement of the law in question is not in terms a measure of exclusion and aims apparently only at the abrogation of trading privileges of the Syrians now in Haiti, a view of the terms of the law as a whole and of the consequences of the enforcement of the particular provisions now invoked leaves the Department with but little doubt that the law in question is an exclusion law identical, in the main, in principle with the Chinese exclusion law now on the statute books of this Government, and wholly identical in effect with the Asiatic exclusion laws which are to be found among the statutes of many other governments. Moreover, considering only the enforcement of the provisions now invoked there would seem, on principle, to be no difference between the enforcement of such provisions and the enforcement of the ordinary exclusion law.
But even leaving aside the general principles of international law, this Government is compelled to the conclusion stated; first, for the reason that there is at present no treaty between the United States and Haiti prescribing the rights of the citizens of the respective countries in the territory of the other; and, secondly, and more importantly, from the consideration that any different conclusion would, as has been intimated, be quite clearly inconsistent with our law practice and our policy in regard to Oriental immigration. And in view of the fact that the statutes of the United States which prohibit Chinese immigration specifically provide that the prohibitions of the acts shall apply to any Chinese person or any person of the Chinese race, whether a subject of China or of any other power, and the further fact that in practice Chinese are excluded from this country, irrespective of their allegiance at the time they seek admission, even when such allegiance is to a power whose native subjects are granted the freest access to the territory of the United [Page 535] States, it would seem hardly consistent for this Government to demand a suspension of the Haitian law in the case of persons of Syrian nativity who are naturalized American citizens. Moreover, it may not be inappropriate for me here to remark that seemingly the same policy and practice, in regard to Oriental immigration, obtain in the great majority of His British Majesty’s colonies,—indeed, the exclusion laws of some of them, notably Australia and New Zealand, are perhaps even more drastic than the regulations of this Government. It would appear, therefore, in view of the established policy and the law and practice of this country as I have just described them, hardly open to this Government to assert that the present action of the Haitian Government is an offense against international comity.
I have the honor to say to Your Excellency, however, that on the 20th ultimo the American Minister at Port au Prince was instructed to require, on behalf of such Syrians as have become American citizens, that the law in question shall be reasonably enforced, and specifically to insist as a matter of right that the American citizens who come within the field of its operation shall be given a sufficient, and reasonable time to liquidate their business.
I have [etc.]