The Border-Walking Japanese Laborers
An early 1894 legal test of the 'pauper and assisted immigrant law' sees laborers shuttled back and forth across the Washington-Canada border.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The fate of the Japanese men who were captured at Whatcom last Friday by Immigration Commissioner W. R. Gourley now depends on the decision of the immigration bureau on the meaning of the pauper and assisted immigrant law. When the Japanese were captured at Whatcom, whither they had walked after landing from the steamer Mogul at Vancouver, their total cash assets were about $15, and on this they intended walking to Portland, Sacramento or San Francisco. They were held pending investigation and admitted that they had been assisted by parents and friends to leave Kobe, and thus came clearly within the law. The law being understood to mean that they must be returned to Canada, that being the country whence they came into the United States, they were taken across the boundary at Blaine last Sunday. They walked across the line again at 3 o'clock next morning and had traveled as far as Sedro on Tuesday when Customs Inspector Blum captured them again and brought them to this city, where they are now detained. The question which has arisen in this case is the same as was raised in regard to the Chinese exclusion act, namely, whether the words 'country whence they came' mean the country whence they started for this country or the country from which they entered the United States.
“The question which has arisen in this case is the same as was raised in regard to the Chinese exclusion act, namely, whether the words 'country whence they came' mean the country whence they started for this country or the country from which they entered the United States.”
This 1894 incident highlights the early and often bureaucratic legal hurdles faced by Asian immigrants in Washington, setting a pattern for the long, restrictive history of federal exclusion acts that would plague the region for decades. The debate over whether 'country whence they came' applied to their origin or their transit point remains a haunting predecessor to modern arguments over asylum and border policy.
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