America is China's ally. Americans say they love and admire the Chinese. But can you go to America, can you become citizens? No. Americans don't want you. They just want you to do their fighting. Their Exclusion Act names you and says you are unfit for American citizenship. If Generalissimo Chiang really has influence in America, why has he not had this stigma erased from American law? There will be no such discrimination against you in the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
Thus last week, by radio, in leaflets and posters, Jap propagandists were hammering at Chinese morale. And they had the U.S. Congress on a tough spot. Before the House Immigration Committee were three bills to modify or repeal Chinese exclusion. If the Committee failed to vote out one of the bills, Chinese feelings would be deeply hurt. If the bill were reported out and passed, the A.F. of L., American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars would be very angry with Congress. And if the bill were reported out and rejected, matters would be still worse: it would be a slap in the face of China, whose morale is already suffering from six years of war.
Blanket Ban. The Immigration Act of 1924 banned all Oriental immigration. What particularly humiliates the Chinese is that, among all Orientals, including Japs, they alone are specifically singled out by name in U.S. law as undesirable citizens. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the result of a California labor surplus (thousands of coolies helped build the U.S. railroads). But the Act, long obsolete, is still on the books.
One of the bills before Congress would weasel. It simply repeals specific mentions of the Chinese, leaving them still barred by the general ban. The two others would permit Chinese to enter and become citizens of the U.S. under the quota system. The latter bills immediately raised the specter—mainly in the Hearst press—of a horde of cheap Chinese labor swarming into the U.S. The fact: China's quota would permit the immigration of precisely 105 Chinese a year.
The "Yellow Peril." Standpat "Yellow Peril" opponents of Oriental immigration have been unable to build up 105 Chinese into a menace. Their spokesman, Representative A. Leonard Allen of Louisiana, argues that repeal of the Chinese ban would immediately generate pressure for the admission of all other Orientals (except, of course, Japs). Representative Allen goes further to argue that tens of thousands of Chinese from Hong Kong might come in under the British quota. One reply was a new bill providing that 75% of the quota must be residents of China proper.
A famed Catholic prelate, Bishop Paul Yupin (see p. 50), told the Committee: "Should thousands of tanks and airplanes from America to China not be forthcoming immediately, the Chinese people and soldiers perhaps will understand that Allied strategy of global warfare dictates otherwise for the time. But should your honorable committee look unfavorably upon these bills before you today, then I assure you that my country and my people will not be able to understand. It will be a great blow to our morale in China and do irreparable harm to the Allied cause."