In 1905, just when it seemed things could not get any worse, the Supreme Court announced its decision in United States v. Ju Toy. The Exclusion Acts, both the first and those that followed, it must be remembered, had never fully excluded the Chinese. Even the first act made exceptions for merchants, teachers, students, and their household staffs. So all through this period a limited number of Chinese were entering the country, some as permanent immigrants, others as American citizens who had left the country and were now returning. But in the Toy decision, the Supreme Court determined that Chinese immigrants denied entry to the United States, even if they alleged American citizenship, could no longer gain access to the courts to appeal the decision. Instead, it gave the secretary of commerce and labor, who oversaw immigration issues, jurisdiction on this matter. The decision of the secretary, the Court ruled, would be “final and conclusive even when the petitioner alleged U.S. citizenship.”

The Supreme Court appeared untroubled by the contradiction between its previous ruling in Wong Kim Ark that U.S. citizenship could not be stripped from Americans of Chinese descent, and its new ruling denying due process to citizens by allowing immigration authorities to decide in effect who was and who wasn’t a citizen without review by any court. According to a New York judge, immigration officials had so much power that if they wished “to order an alien drawn, quartered and chucked overboard, they could do so without interference.”

Not surprisingly, after the Court endowed immigration officials with this power, Chinese admission rates started to plummet. From 1897 to 1899, 725 of 7,762 Chinese who had applied to enter the United States were rejected—about one in ten; then, between 1903 and 1905, the rejection rate rose to one in four.

(Chang 141-142)