The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 62, July 1958 - April, 1959 Page: 479
617 p. : ill., maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Pershing's Chinese Refugees in Texas
Since 1882, an act of Congress had prescribed that "hereafter
no state court or court of the United States shall admit Chinese
to citizenship...." This law effectively prevented the refugees
from obtaining citizenship.29 Naturalization not being obtainable,
what solution was at hand which might be used to legalize these
Chinese as residents? The Bureau of Immigration at one time
recommended a system of parole for the relief of the refugees,
but this was never acted upon. The fact is that in the last analysis,
the refugees were Chinese, and the vast majority of people in
the country were hostile, or at least apathetic, to the idea of
allowing Chinese to reside in the United States. On the other
hand the refugees had one friend, Page. He had resided in the
Orient and strongly opposed the government's plan to return the
refugees there, and he was greatly disturbed over the request of
the War Department for funds to deport them. Familiar with
the economic and health conditions in Kwangtung province, from
which most of them had come, he knew that many of them would
soon suffer from malnutrition and the lack of medical service if
they were obliged to return to the living conditions there after
having been acclimated to those in the United States. Eventually,
he feared, a large number would be claimed by early death.
With Congress about to act on the appropriation for the expense
of repatriation, the circumstances, to Page, seemed to demand
immediate action in Washington. In the latter part of October,
1921, Page went to the capital. He knew that he was the man who
had a job to do, and that he alone must find the means.
Nearly two decades before, when he was a government immi-
gration official in the Philippine Islands, he had become a close
friend of Clement L. Bouve, another government official. Bouve,
who had been an officer in the United States Army during World
War I, was the senior member of a law firm which practiced
before the various federal agencies in Washington, including the
Bureau of Immigration. Page thought that his friend could advise
him concerning the legal complexities of his Chinese problem.
In Washington, also, was General Pershing, only recently returned
to the United States from the scene of the allied success in France
in 1918, and newly possessed of the august title of "General of
29United States Statutes at Large, XXII, 61.479
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 62, July 1958 - April, 1959, periodical, 1959; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101173/m1/576/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.