These cases of individual hardship are due to the ambiguous and
defective provisions of the acts of Congress approved respectively on
the 6th May, 1882, and 5th July, 1884. The hardship has in some cases
been remedied by the action of the courts. In other cases, however,
where the phraseology of the statutes has appeared to be conclusive
against any discretion on the part of the officers charged with the
execution of the law, Chinese persons expressly entitled to free
admission under the treaty have been refused a landing and sent back to
the country whence they came without being afforded any opportunity to
show in the courts or otherwise their right to the privilege of free
ingress and egress which it was the purpose of the treaty to secure.
In the language of one of the judicial determinations of the Supreme
Court of the United States to which I have referred--
The supposition should not be indulged that Congress, while professing
to faithfully execute the treaty stipulations and recognizing the fact
that they secure to a certain class the right to go from and come to
the United States, intended to make its protection depend upon the
performance of conditions which it was physically impossible to perform.
(112 U.S. Reports, p. 554, Chew Heong _vs._ United States.)
The act of July 5, 1884, imposes such an impossible condition in not
providing for the admission, under proper certificate, of Chinese
travelers of the exempted classes in the cases most likely to arise in
ordinary commercial intercourse.
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