Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, With the Address of the President to Congress December 8, 1914
File No. 132.22/3.
[Untitled]
Washington, February 21, 1914.
To the Diplomatic and Consular Officers of the United States in China.
Sir: The Department sends you herewith, for your information, a copy of its instruction No. 16 of February 13, 1914, to the Consul General at Shanghai concerning the status of Chinese women and women partly of Chinese descent who are the wives or widows of American citizens.
I am [etc.]
The Secretary of State to Consul General Sammons.
Washington, February 13, 1914.
Sir: The Department has received from your office despatch No. 785 of November 13, 1913,2 concerning Chinese wives or widows of American citizens, with especial reference to the question of their right to obtain passports of this Government and to be registered in American consulates. You refer to the cases of women partly of Chinese descent as well as those who are wholly Chinese. In this connection you call attention to the provision of section 1994 of the Revised Statutes concerning the naturalization of alien women by marriage to American citizens. The provision of law to which you refer reads as follows:
Any woman who is now or may hereafter be married to a citizen of the United States, and who might herself be lawfully naturalized, shall be deemed a citizen.
On January 20, 1914, the Department sent a copy of your despatch to the Department of Labor for an expression of opinion as to the status of women of the class mentioned, and I enclose herewith a copy of a letter of January 28 in reply.
Because of the apparent lack of a judicial decision of the question involved, and in view of the apparent opinion of the Department of Labor, which has [Page 6] supervision of naturalization matters, namely that women having a trace of Chinese blood are not eligible to naturalization as citizens of the United States, this Department can not authorize you to treat them as such. Regular passports are not issued by this Government to persons who are not citizens of the United States, and the Department has not authorized the separate registration in consulates of such persons. Accordingly you should not register separately the wives or widows of American citizens if they have a trace of Chinese blood. However, upon the same principle that Chinese wives of American citizens are admitted into this country with their husbands, they may be included in passports and registration certificates issued to their husbands, and in case of need they may be given the benefit of your unofficial good offices.
I am [etc.]
The Acting Secretary of Labor to the Secretary of State.
Washington, January 28, 1914.
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 20th instant,2 with which you transmit copy of a despatch from the Consul General at Shanghai, asking for a ruling as to the status of women of part Chinese blood who are married to American citizens, particularly whether they may be considered citizens of the United States under the provisions of section 1994 of the Revised Statutes.
As I understand the case stated by the Consul General, two questions are involved, one of which is a judicial question and cannot therefore be determined by the executive branch of the Government, and the other of which is administrative and can be determined, in so far as a legal question is open to administrative determination at all, by the executive branch.
- (1)
- As the power to naturalize aliens is vested in the courts, the only manner in which an authoritative decision can be secured on the question whether a person whose blood is partly white and partly Chinese is a “free white person” within the meaning of section 2169 of the Revised Statutes would be through the action of a court with respect to an application filed by such a person for naturalization. In this connection attention is directed to the fact that under section 14 of the Chinese exclusion act of 1882 no court can legally naturalize a Chinese person, this being a provision which is more specific in its terms than section 2169 R. S. The exclusion laws, on the one hand, relate to Chinese persons and persons of Chinese descent; while section 2169, on the other, relates to “free white persons.” It may be seriously doubted whether the first term was not intended, so far as naturalization is concerned at least, to include all persons with Chinese blood, and the second to exclude all persons not purely white, “white persons,” as the term has always been understood in this country, meaning those with no strain of colored blood in their veins.
- (2)
- The administrative question, to wit, whether a woman having Chinese blood in her veins, but in whom the white blood predominates, shall be regarded as admissible to the United States under the Chinese exclusion laws, was carefully considered by the former Department of Commerce and Labor on several occasions, the holding uniformly having been that for purposes of administering the law persons should be regarded as other than of Chinese descent if the admixture of Chinese blood is less than one-half. Of course, this question, being in its final analysis one of law, could be decided in the courts, if anyone feeling aggrieved at the Department’s position saw fit to sue out a writ of habeas corpus; but so far all who have been affected by the Department’s holding seem to have been satisfied to abide by its decision.
Another proposition incident to this matter has heretofore operated in such a way as to avoid embarrassment to the administrative officers and at the same time has doubtless been partly responsible for these questions not going before [Page 7] the courts. This consists of the fact that even women of full Chinese blood who are married to American citizens are regarded as admissible to the United States, notwithstanding the provisions of the Chinese exclusion law, if admissible under the provisions of the general immigration act, upon the theory that the husband, an American citizen, has a right to have his wife with him in the country of his citizenship, whatever her race may be; and doubtless many women of the half or quarter blood have been admitted upon the same theory without raising any question regarding their legal status.
Of course, in this letter the question involved is treated upon the basis of acquirement of citizenship by a naturalization proceeding, upon the theory that an alien woman who cannot meet the conditions imposed with respect to naturalization—a direct method of acquiring citizenship—is not entitled to secure the status of a citizen by marriage—an indirect method (Low Wah Suey v. Backus, 225 U. S., 460, 473, 475).
Respectfully,