Paper sons

Paper sons or paper daughters are Chinese people who were born in China and illegally immigrated to the United States and Canada[1] by purchasing documentation which stated that they were blood relatives to Chinese people who had already received U.S. or Canadian[2] citizenship or residency.

[3] Several historical events such as the Chinese Exclusion Act and 1906 San Francisco earthquake caused the illegal documents to be produced.

[4] As the American economy plummeted, problems of unemployment arose and blame was placed upon the Chinese for taking over jobs for low pay.

Other Chinese men would travel back to China as United States citizens and report that their wives had given birth to a son.

[10] These questions had been anticipated and thus, irrespective of the true nature of the relationship to their sponsor, the applicant had prepared months in advance by committing these details to memory.

A detention center was in operation for thirty years; however, there were many concerns about the sanitation and safety of the immigrants at Angel Island, which proved to be true in 1940 when the administration building burned down.

Europeans and other first or second-class ticket holders were allowed to disembark, while Asian and other immigrants or those who had health concerns and were in need for quarantine were sent to Angel Island for processing.

A poem that was engraved on the Angel Island immigration station wooden wall describes the difficult conditions that they were kept under.

The confession required both self-report and reporting on friends, neighbors, business associates or even family members.

[19] After China became a World War II ally, that vast power over non-citizens was deployed in raids against immigrants of various ethnic groups whose politics were considered suspect.

The United States government was tipped off by an informer in Hong Kong as part of a Cold War effort to stop illegal immigration.

Many paper sons never told their descendants about their past, leaving them with confusion and disconnecting them from their family history.