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ALIEN LAND LAWS

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Alien land laws are most often associated with western states' attempts to limit
the presence and permanence of Japanese immigrants from 1913 through the end of
World War II by forbidding "aliens ineligible for citizenship" from purchasing,
and later from leasing property in the states in which these laws were passed.
The total list of states that passed alien land laws or that contained
restrictions against aliens ineligible for citizenship owning property in their
state constitutions included Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, Idaho,
Louisiana, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, Utah,
Washington, and Wyoming. Alien land laws were ruled unconstitutional by the U.S.
Supreme Court in 1952.


CONTENTS

 * 1 Origins
 * 2 Targeting Japanese Immigrants
 * 3 World War II and Postwar Invalidation
 * 4 For More Information


ORIGINS

Alien land laws were first implemented in the Western states in the form of
positive legislation to guarantee that aliens could hold land the same as
citizens in order to encourage migrants to move to these territories and acquire
land regardless of citizenship and to encourage companies to invest in the
development of these territories. Alien land laws that restricted aliens' rights
to agricultural lands, so often associated with anti-Japanese racism, were
initially designed to prevent large-scale absentee landlords from buying up land
by giving preference instead to resident aliens and citizen farmers. Early
restrictive legislation also focused on reducing the ability of land speculators
to increase the price of land by selling to overseas investors for exorbitant
prices.

As racial tensions rose in the West against Chinese immigrants, laws were passed
by Western states to prevent Chinese immigrants from owning land. In Oregon's
1859 constitution, it stated that no "Chinaman" could own property in the state,
and it protected specifically the rights of "white foreigners" the same property
owning rights as enjoyed by native citizens. The territory of Washington passed
legislation in 1886 in response to the spreading anti-Chinese unrest in the
territory that prohibited aliens ineligible for citizenship from property
rights. The Washington legislature added a statute to their constitution in 1889
written more broadly, declaring that one had to declare the intent to naturalize
"in good faith" to be eligible for property ownership, which meant that the
applicant had to be eligible for naturalization, and Asian immigrants were not
eligible. When California re-wrote its constitution in 1879, it limited land
ownership to aliens of the "white race or of African descent," the same language
used to limit naturalization in 1870. The 1870 Naturalization Act had removed
the "white" only restriction on citizenship that had been in force since 1790
and expanded naturalization rights to anyone of African descent. This meant that
if an applicant was neither white, nor of African descent, they were not
eligible for naturalization. The coded language targeting "aliens ineligible for
citizenship" became a legal way that individual states could limit the rights of
Asian immigrants without targeting a group racially in the language of the law.


TARGETING JAPANESE IMMIGRANTS

In direct response to anti-Japanese hysteria, alien land laws shifted focus to
Japanese immigrants when California passed the Alien Land Law of 1913
prohibiting aliens ineligible for citizenship from owning land, and adding a
prohibition against aliens ineligible for citizenship from possessing long-term
leases. Families and communities navigated their way around the law. Some
created corporations to purchase land on behalf of Japanese immigrants, others
purchased land through white intermediaries, and others purchased land in the
names of their U.S.-born citizen children. The first California test case of the
last practice involved the Harada family of Riverside, California ( California
v. Harada , 1918). Despite the fact that California Attorney General Ulysses S.
Webb had co-written the law, he admitted that the law as written could not
prevent U.S.-born citizens from owning land. Nisei children were U.S.-born
citizens under the 14th Amendment, so Japanese immigrants found that purchasing
land in their children's names was one way they could circumvent alien land laws
for a time.

From 1919 through 1923, state legislatures throughout the western United States
bowed to renewed pressure from anti-Asian and anti-immigrant groups, labor
unions, granges, and politicians to close loopholes in alien land laws.
Anti-Japanese groups made wild claims about the "threat" that Japanese
immigrants represented in terms of economic competition and their alleged
inability to assimilate fully into American society. California passed its own
amendment to its alien land law in 1920, prohibiting even short-term leases of
land to aliens ineligible for citizenship. It also prohibited stock companies
owned by aliens ineligible for citizenship from acquiring agricultural lands.
Washington revised its law with the Alien Land Bill of 1921, and like
California, further refined the law again in 1923. One section passed in 1923,
for example, was designed to limit the rights of U.S. born children to hold land
in trust for an alien parent in an effort to end the well-known practice of
purchasing land in the names of Nisei children.

Various court cases tested the alien land laws with mixed results. Generally the
14th Amendment right to citizenship of U.S.-born children was upheld, except in
cases where the courts determined that a child's ownership of land was designed
solely to give aliens ineligible for citizenship principle interest in
agricultural lands. For example, in the California Supreme Court case of Estate
of Tetsubumi Yano , (188 Cal. 645, [1922]) the court defended the Nisei child's
right to own agricultural land and the alien parent's right to guardianship over
that land; but in the case of Washington v. Hirabayashi , (133 Wash. 462,
[1925]), the Washington State Supreme Court determined that the transfer of
stock shares in a corporation that held agricultural lands into the name of a
Nisei child had not changed the fact that Issei maintained primary interest and
ownership over the land. Therefore in that case, the court ruled that the land
must escheat to the state. Even though the issue of citizen property ownership
complicated rulings, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1923 the laws restricting
the rights of aliens ineligible for citizenship from owning land directly were
not a violation of aliens' rights to equal protection under the 14th Amendment.


WORLD WAR II AND POSTWAR INVALIDATION

Enforcement of alien land laws intensified during World War II and several other
states added alien land laws for the first time during the war, demonstrating
the fact that the law was used to further expel Japanese immigrants from some
states and prevent permanent settlement in others through the enforcement of
state property laws, and to prevent the return of incarcerated Japanese
Americans to the West Coast.

After World War II, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against alien land laws,
upholding the rights of citizens first to hold property despite their
relationship with alien parents ineligible for citizenship, and later
determining that alien land laws did infringe on aliens' rights to equal
protection under the law. The U.S. Supreme Court, in the case of Oyama v.
California , upheld Fred Oyama's right as a U.S.-born citizen to own property
even though his father had purchased the land in his name in order to get around
California's alien land law. In 1952, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated the
remaining alien land laws in the case of Sei Fuji v. California , determining
that forbidding aliens from owning land was a violation of the 14th Amendment's
equal protection clause.

Authored by Cherstin M. Lyon , California State University, San Bernardino
Lyon, Cherstin


FOR MORE INFORMATION

"About the Harada House," Riverside Metropolitan Museum.

Cuison Villazor, Rose. "Rediscovering Oyama v. California: At the Intersection
of Property, Race, and Citizenship," Washington University Law Review , 87, No.
5 (2010): 979-1042.

Daniels, Roger. The Politics of Prejudice: The Anti-Japanese Movement in
California and the Struggle for Japanese Exclusion . Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1962.

Chuman, Frank F. The Bamboo People: The Law and Japanese-Americans . Del Mar,
CA: Publisher's Inc., 1976.

Ichioka, Yuji. The Issei: The World of the First Generation Japanese Immigrants,
1885-1924 . New York: The Free Press, 1988.

Lazarus, Mark. "An Historical Analysis of Alien Land Law: Washington Territory
and State: 1853-1889," University of Puget Sound Law Review , 12 (1989):
198-246.

Lyon, Cherstin. Prisons and Patriots: Japanese American Wartime Citizenship,
Civil Disobedience, and Historical Memory . Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 2011.

Matsumoto, Valerie. Farming the Home Place: A Japanese American Community in
California, 1919-1982 . Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993.

Rawitsch, Mark. The House on Lemon Street: Japanese Pioneers and the American
Dream . Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2012.

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Last updated Dec. 11, 2023, 7:39 p.m..

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Eiichi Sakauye describes his Issei father's method of coping with the alien land
law. Courtesy of Densho and the Japanese American Museum of San Jose, excerpted
from Eiichi Sakauye Interview, Segment 8 (2005) More info »
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Eiichi Sakauye describes his Issei father's method of coping with the alien land
law. Courtesy of Densho and the Japanese American Museum of San Jose, excerpted
from Eiichi Sakauye Interview, Segment 8 (2005) More info »
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Top

From the Densho Digital Repository



See more »

About the Incarceration
Do Words Matter?
Historical Timeline
Map


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