By Greg Hugh, Staff Writer 

The U.S. Immigration Station, a National Historic Landmark, located on Angel Island in San Francisco bay, near the Tiburon peninsula, recently observed its 100th anniversary and was commemorated by a Proclamation issued by President Barak Obama.
 
What Ellis Island symbolizes to Americans of European heritage who immigrated to the East Coast, Angel Island symbolizes to Americans of Asian heritage on the West Coast. It was like Ellis Island in New York, but with a major difference since Ellis Island was more of a welcoming gateway to European immigrants, and we always celebrated the immigration story of that island but the majority of people coming from Asia were not welcomed.
 
Most of the first Chinese immigrants arrived in the United States during the California Gold Rush (1849-50) and were then recruited as a major source of labor to build the railroad and the economic development of the western frontier. With the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Congress restricted the immigration of Chinese laborers and prohibited Chinese immigrants, already in this country, from becoming American citizens. Exempted were merchants, diplomats, ministers, travelers, students, and children of American citizens. Many Chinese attempted to immigrate under these exempt categories which prompted U.S. officials to scrutinize all Chinese immigration documents. 
 
Immigration center on Angel Island 
 
In the years that the Immigration Station operated on Angel Island (1910-40), it has been estimated that approximately one million people were processed through the station. Out of this number, approximately 250,000 Chinese and 150,000 Japanese immigrants were detained at the Station. Small numbers of immigrants from other Pacific Rim countries, including Russia, Korea, and the Philippines were also detained at the Station, but only briefly.
 
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 provided tough entry restrictions, so many immigrants waited on the island for as long as two years while they exhausted appeals. Upon arrival at Angel Island, Chinese immigrants were held in detention barracks for weeks or months until their paperwork was approved. The Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed in 1943 when China became an ally of the United States during World War II. 
   
During their long wait on Angel Island, some Chinese men, confined in the barracks, expressed their bitterness, frustration, and despair with poems carved in the redwood walls. Constructed in 1908, the barracks soon had poems written with Chinese ink brushes on its walls. The walls were then painted which covered up the first generation of poems. Subsequently, the detainees began to carve their poems into the walls. These poems reflect and record the hardship endured, and the indignity suffered by the early Chinese while establishing roots in America.
 
Some of the people who passed through Angel Island had false papers, claiming in many cases to be sons and daughters of Chinese American citizens, a ticket for admission under the era's restrictive laws. These so-called "paper sons" had spent considerable time studying the background of their supposed ancestors, and the job of the immigration officers was to ferret out these "paper sons" through extensive interrogation sessions. If they were caught, they were shipped back to China; if they succeeded they were admitted. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of immigrants got through the process using false papers.
 
When immigration laws were relaxed in the 1950s and '60s, the government offered amnesty to people who had used false papers. Many accepted, but there are probably many more paper sons and daughters who did not confess. Likely many of them did not trust the U.S. government, particularly in the era before the United States normalized relations with what many conservatives called "Red China."
 
The Immigration Station was closed after a fire in 1940. Angel Island is now a state park, and the Immigration Station buildings have been restored. In 1962, the Chinese American community successfully lobbied the State of California to designate the Immigration Station as a State Landmark. Today, the Angel Island Immigration Station is a federally designated National Historic Landmark. It was renovated by the California State Parks and reopened on February 16, 2009.
 
For more information visit www.angelisland.com/immigration_station/index.php