Coaching Papers
While visiting the National Archives at San Francisco, we came across a box labeled "Coaching Papers" which illuminated the lengths by which Chinese nationals would go to pass immigration interrogations on Angel Island. Following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, many government documents linking immigrants to "landed" Chinese who had already legally entered the US as merchants, scholars, religious officials and sponsored students had been destroyed. This opened the door for other interested Chinese immigrants to find a way to enter the United States by falsely claiming they were related to established Chinese citizens. The questions during these interrogations were so unreasonably detailed and specific that even close blood-related relatives could not pass without extensive review of information only family members would know. Those who were lucky enough to pass these examinations became known as America's "Paper Sons and Daughters" given their ties to sponsoring Chinese "relatives" existed on paper only.
"Coaching notes were an essential strategy to circumvent exclusion, but they also revealed just how dependent Chinese immigration had become on lies, false documents, and corruption."
Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America, Lee & Young
Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America, Lee & Young
Photographs taken of coaching papers from the National Archives at San Francisco
Links to Additional information
- Detailed description of coaching papers belonging to Fook Wing Chung. - New York Times
- CNN anchor Richard Lui reports on "Paper Sons and Daughters," a group of Chinese immigrants that bought fake papers and claimed to be the children of legal U.S. citizens in order to skirt the Chinese Exclusion Act. His report looks into studies that show one third of today's current Chinese American population are descendants or are actual "paper sons or daughters" today. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hhc-om3SXKw