Certificates of Residence for Chinese Laborers

Certificate of residence for Wong Kin Hay [?], 1894 March 16; Certificates of residence for Chinese laborers, MS 3642; California Historical Society

San Francisco’s second annual Archives Crawl celebrates the history of immigration and immigrants in California. The immigration stories documented in the archival record held at the California Historical Society are various and complex, reflecting experiences of cultural resilience and survival, as well as struggles with discrimination and hardship. Some of the records at CHS were generated by local, state, and federal authorities to surveil and control immigrant communities, and restrict immigration based on race and ethnicity. One such collection consists of seventeen certificates of residence for Chinese laborers, dated between the years 1894 and 1897. This collection has been digitized and is available on CHS’s digital library here.

Now a rich source of historical and genealogical significance, these certificates represented the codification of nineteenth-century sinophobia, or anti-Chinese racism. Under the provisions of the 1892 Geary Act, which amended the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, all Chinese and Chinese Americans in the United States were required to apply for, obtain, and carry a government-issued certificate of residence proving their legal presence in the United States. Any person of Chinese ethnicity discovered without such identification risked arrest and deportation. The Geary Act essentially legislated racial profiling: Chinese Americans were presumed guilty of an immigration offense based solely on their ethnicity, as perceived by non-Chinese authorities, until proven innocent.

Each certificate includes the laborer’s name, local residence, and occupation; information about his height, eye color, complexion, and physical marks or peculiarities; and a photographic print. Reproduced above is the certificate for Wong Kin Hay [?], a 37-year-old farmer from Mountain View, California.

Details about the Crawl can be found here. 

Marie Silva

Archivist & Manuscripts Librarian

California Historical Society