华裔移民的故事 从暗处来到聚光灯下

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这位男士现年88岁，看起来有些虚弱，但不失体面。他拄着手杖微笑着，身后的博物馆墙面上正在播放他1936年移民来美国的故事。他名为洪敦丰（Tun Funn Hom，音），当年是以“纸生仔”(paper son)的身份进入美国，拿的是声称其父是美国公民的假身份。在为期60年的美国法律排华时期，有数以万计的中国人都是通过这种方式从中国来到美国。

For years, it was a shameful⁴ family secret. But Mr. Hom, a New York laundry worker who helped build battleships in World War II and put three children through college, outlived the stigma⁵ of an earlier era’s immigration fraud.

多年来，这一直是个令人感到羞耻的家庭秘密。不过在纽约做洗衣工人的洪先生足够长寿，已经摆脱了更早年间移民欺诈的耻辱烙印。他曾在“二战”时期帮助建造战舰，还供三个孩子读完了大学。

A narrow legalization program let him reclaim⁶ his true name in the 1950s. His life story is now on permanent display at the Museum of Chinese in America, which reopened last week at 215 Centre Street. And it illuminates⁷ an almost forgotten chapter in American history, one that historians say has new relevance⁸ in the current crackdown on illegal immigration.

上世纪50年代，一项名额有限的新移民项目使他得以重新启用自己的真名。他的人生故事现在成为了美国华人博物馆(Museum of Chinese in America)的永久展览项目。该博物馆于上周在曼哈顿中街215号重新开放。它展示了美国历史上一段几乎被遗忘的篇章。历史学家表示，这段历史与眼下针对非法移民的严厉打击具有新的关联性。

“When we think about illegal immigration, we think about Mexican immigrants, whereas in fact illegal immigration cuts across all immigrant groups,” said Erika Lee, the author of “At America’s Gate: Chinese Immigration During the Exclusion Era, 1882-1943.” The book traces how today’s national apparatus⁹ of immigration restriction¹⁰ was created and shaped by efforts to keep out Chinese workers and to counter the tactics they developed to overcome the barriers.

“说到非法移民，我们会想到墨西哥移民，而实际上非法移民涉及所有的移民群体，”《在美国的大门前面：1882-1943排华时期的中国移民》(At America’s Gate: Chinese Immigration During the Exclusion Era, 1882-1943)一书的作者李漪莲(Erika Lee)说。这本书追溯了如今限制移民的国家机构是如何因排斥中国工人和打击他们想出来的克服障碍的策略而诞生，如何因之改变。

The current parallels are striking, said Professor Lee, who teaches history at the University of Minnesota. And though some descendants of paper sons do not make the connection, many others have become immigrant rights advocates in law, politics or museums like this one, which hopes to draw a national audience to its new Chinatown space, designed by Maya Lin.

在明尼苏达大学教授历史课的李教授说，目前的这种相似之处令人震惊。尽管若干“纸生仔”的后裔并不会做这样的联想，但他们当中也有很多人在法律界、政界或博物馆领域成了移民权利的支持者；这家美国华人博物馆由林璎(Maya Lin)设计，希望能吸引全国参观者来到这处位于华埠的新址。

“In the Chinese-American community, it has only been very recently that these types of histories have been made public,” Professor Lee said. “Even my own grandparents who came in as paper sons were very, very reluctant to talk about this.”

“在华裔美国人社区，这类的历史近期才开始面向公众，”李教授说。“我的祖父母也是以‘纸生仔’的身份来到美国，就连他们也很不情愿谈起那段历史。”

For Mr. Hom, who was a teenager when he arrived to work in his father’s laundry on Bleecker Street, the past is now a blur¹¹. “It was so long ago that I hardly remember,” he said, as his wife, Yoke¹² Won Hom, 82, straightened the lapels of his suit for a photograph.

洪先生来到父亲位于布利克街上的洗衣房工作时只有十几岁，如今这段往事在他心中已经模糊。“时间太久了，我都不记得了，”说话时，他的妻子——82岁的洪玉媛（Yoke Won Hom，音）正帮他整理西装的领子，准备拍照。

But when his memory was still sharp, his daughter Dorothy transcribed¹³ 48 pages of his taped recollections, which became the basis of a four-minute first-person narrative¹⁴ produced by the museum. It is one of 10 such autobiographical videos that form the museum’s core exhibit.

但在他记忆力依旧清晰的当年，他的女儿多萝西(Dorothy)曾经把他的录音回忆录誊写为一份48页的文件，美国华人博物馆以此为底本，制作了一份四分钟的第一人称叙述视频。此次展览的核心部分就是10份这样的自传视频。

“To get into the U.S. under the laws back then, I had to pretend to be another person,” Mr. Hom wrote. His father had bought him immigration papers that included 32 pages of information he was to memorize in preparation for hours of interrogation at Ellis Island.

“当时，为了合法进入美国，我得假装成另外一个人，”洪先生写道。他的父亲给他买来了移民文件，其中包括32页的信息，他必须花费几个小时背下来，应付埃里斯岛上的盘查。

Such cheat sheets were part of an elaborate, self-perpetuating cycle of enforcement and evasion¹⁶, historians say. The authorities kept ratcheting up their scrutiny¹⁷ and requirements for documents, feeding a lucrative¹⁸ network of fraud and official corruption¹⁹ as immigrants tried to show they were either merchants or native-born citizens, groups exempt²⁰ from the exclusion laws.

历史学家们说，这样的欺骗性文件是一个精心打造、长久存在的执法与犯法怪圈的一部分。当局持续加强对文件的仔细审查和要求；而移民又试图表明他们是商人或本地出生的居民，不属于排外法案的对象，从而滋生出利润丰厚的造假与官员腐败网络。

Mr. Hom was allowed ashore²¹ as Hom Ngin Sing, a student and son of a native. In reality, his father had made it to the United States only about six years earlier, through a similar subterfuge²², like an estimated 90 percent of Chinese immigrants of the period.

洪先生以“洪迎新”（Hom Ngin Sing，音）的身份入境，这个身份的主人是学生，一个本地居民的儿子。事实上，他的父亲6年前才靠着类似的诡计来到美国，据估计，当时大约90%的中国移民都是这样做的。

Like many poor families from Taishan, a region that sent many emigrants²³ to California during the Gold Rush of 1849, the Homs had deep ties to the United States. Mr. Hom’s great-uncle, for example, died in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.

与许多来自台山的贫困家庭一样——在1849年的淘金潮期间，台山有很多人移民到了加利福尼亚——洪家在美国也有密切的亲戚关系。比如说，洪先生的大伯就是在1906年旧金山地震中丧生的。

But unlike any other immigrant group, the Chinese were barred from naturalizing. That bar was part of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which was passed in 1882 after years of escalating²⁴ anti-Chinese violence in the West spurred by recessions, labor¹⁵ strife²⁵ and a culture of white supremacy²⁶.

但是和很多移民群体不同，华人群体被排除在入籍之外。受到经济衰退、劳工纠纷与白人至上文化影响，美国西部的反华暴力事件几年来持续上升，最终导致1882年通过的《排华法案》(Chinese Exclusion Act)，不得入籍也是其中的一部分。

The law was expanded in 1892 with a measure that required all Chinese to register with the government and subjected them to deportation²⁸ unless they proved legal residency, which required the testimony²⁹ of at least one white witness.

1892年，该法案又被延长生效年限，并要求所有华人在政府登记，除非他们能证明自己的合法居留身份（要求有至少一名白人证人的证词），否则便有可能被驱逐出境。

In a comment that reflected the tone in Congress, one senator asserted that the government had the right “to set apart for them, as we have for the Indians, a territory or reservation, where they should not break out to contaminate our people.”

一位参议员断言，政府有权利“就像我们对待印第安人那样，把他们隔离在一个区域或一块保留地之中，让他们没法出来毒害我们的人民。”这个说法颇能反映议会的态度。

Lawyers argued that the law was repugnant to “the very soul of the Constitution.” But it was upheld in a sweeping³⁰ Supreme³¹ Court decision of 1893, Fong Yue Ting v. United States, which held that the government’s power to deport²⁷ foreigners, whether here legally or not, was as “absolute and unqualified” as the power to exclude them. That finding reverberates³² today, said Daniel Kanstroom, a legal scholar and the author of “Deportation Nation.”

律师们称，这项法律与“宪法精神”相矛盾。但是，1893年，它得到最高法院在冯越亭诉美国(Fong Yue Ting v. United States)案中做出的压倒性判决的支持。那项判决认为，与排斥他们的权力一样，政府也具有“绝对的、不受限制的”驱逐外国人的权力——不管是否是合法居留。法律学者、《驱逐国度》(Deportation Nation)的作者丹尼尔·坎斯特卢姆(Daniel Kanstroom)称，那一判决在今天依然有影响。

Long after exclusion laws were repealed³³ by Congress in 1943, after China became a World War II ally, that vast power over noncitizens was deployed³⁴ in raids against immigrants of various ethnic³⁵ groups whose politics were considered suspect.

1943年，在中国成为美国的“二战”盟友之后，国会废除了排华法律。但是在那之后很久，对非公民的巨大权力依然被用来对政治倾向可疑的各个种族移民进行突然搜查。

In the 1950s, Mr. Hom and his relatives, like many Chinese New Yorkers, suddenly faced the exposure of their false papers in just such an operation. The government was tipped off by an informer in Hong Kong as part of a cold war effort to stop illegal immigration.

在20世纪50年代，和纽约的很多华裔一样，洪和亲戚们的假身份在这样一次搜查中突然曝光。政府从香港的一名告密者那里获得了消息——这是政府阻止非法移民的冷战努力的一部分。

“We were very scared,” said Mrs. Hom, who worked at the family’s laundry, first in the Bronx, then in Bay Ridge³⁶, Brooklyn. “Everybody was very worried on account maybe they all be sent back to China.”

“我们非常害怕，”洪夫人说。她在家族的洗衣店工作，开始是在布朗克斯，后来是在布鲁克林的贝里奇。“大家非常担心会被一起遣送回中国。”

But in a government “confession program,” Mr. Hom and some of his relatives admitted their illegal entry; because Mr. Hom had served in the military, he received citizenship³⁷ papers within months.

不过，在政府的一个“认罪项目”中，洪和一些亲戚承认自己非法入境。由于洪曾在军中服役，所以几个月后，他收到了公民身份文件。

As someone who never made it to high school, he now beams over his children’s professional successes and his six multiethnic grandchildren. His son, Tom, is a dentist in Manhattan; his daughter Mary is a physician in the Syracuse area, and Dorothy, an interior designer, works with her husband, Michael Strauss, a principal with Vanguard Construction, which recently completed DBGB Kitchen and Bar, Daniel Boulud’s latest restaurant.

作为一个从未上过高中的人，洪现在很为孩子们的事业成功和6名多种族孙辈感到欣慰。他的儿子汤姆(Tom)是曼哈顿的一名牙医；女儿玛丽(Mary)是锡拉丘兹地区的一名内科医生；多萝西是室内设计师，和丈夫迈克尔·斯特劳斯(Michael Strauss)一起在Vanguard Construction建筑事务所工作，该公司前不久刚建好丹尼尔·布鲁德(Daniel Boulud)的最新餐馆DBGB Kitchen and Bar。

At a time when debates about immigration often include the claim that “my relatives came the legal way,” referring to a period when there were few restrictions³⁸ on any immigrants except the Chinese, the Hom family has a different perspective.

曾经有一段时间，关于移民的辩论经常包括这样的声明，“我的亲戚是通过合法途径来的”。那段时期，政府对中国移民之外的其他移民几乎没有任何限制。洪一家人对此有不同观点。

“One’s status being legal or illegal, it’s two seconds apart at any point,” Dorothy said. “For some, the process is more difficult than others.”

“一个人的身份究竟是合法还是不合法，是相当微妙的事情，”多萝西说，“对有些人来说，这个过程要困难得多。”

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