United States v. Leu Jin

• Decision Date: 29 November 1911
• Citation: 192 F. 580
• Parties: UNITED STATES v. LEU JIN.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of New York

192 F. 580

UNITED STATES v. LEU JIN.

United States District Court, S.D. New York.

November 29, 1911

Henry A. Wise, U.S. Atty., and Roger H. Clarke, Asst. U.S. Atty.

James A. Donegan, for defendant.

HOLT District Judge.

This is an appeal from an order of a commissioner directing that the defendant be deported on the ground that he is a Chinese laborer in this country without a certificate. He claims that he is an American citizen, born in San Francisco. This claim of American citizenship by a person of Chinese descent is one which can be easily fabricated, and which, if fabricated, is very difficult to be disproved by the government. On the other hand, if it is true, there are generally no witnesses who can prove it, except Chinese witnesses. It is easy to decide such cases on the theory that all such claims are false. Probably many of them are false, but some of them must be true; for there must be a considerable number of persons of Chinese descent born here since Chinese immigration into this country began.

In this case, there is sufficient formal evidence that the defendant was born in this country. The government asserts that such evidence cannot be accepted, because of inconsistencies between the statements made by the defendant and some of his witnesses on the examination by the Chinese inspector before his arrest and the evidence given in this proceeding. These inconsistencies substantially relate to the conditions of the life of the defendant in San Francisco. The proof is that he came to New York when he was about 8 years old. The statements made to the inspector before arrest and the testimony of some of the witnesses on the hearing differ as to some details of his life in San Francisco. For instance the defendant says that he lived with his father and mother in the front of the first floor of a house there, and that there were no other women or children on that floor. Some of the older witnesses say that there was another Chinese family, with women and children, in the rear of the same floor. The defendant, also, in his statement to the inspector, said at first that he did not know of any one who could prove his birth in San Francisco, but afterwards said that Leu Dock Yuen could do so, but he did not know where he was. Leu Dock Yuen is produced as a witness and testified in the case; but it seems to me not strange that the defendant should not have known where he was when first...