The California Alien Land Law of 1913 (also known as the Webb–Haney Act) prohibited "aliens ineligible for citizenship" from owning agricultural land or possessing long-term leases over it, but permitted leases lasting up to three years. It affected the Chinese, Indian, Japanese, and Korean immigrant farmers in California. Implicitly, the law was primarily directed at the Japanese who were the subject of much hostility.
It passed 35–2 in the State Senate and 72–3 in the State Assembly and was co-written by attorney Francis J. Heney and California state attorney general Ulysses S. Webb at the behest of Governor Hiram Johnson. Japan's Consul General Kametaro Iijima and lawyer Juichi Soyeda lobbied against the law. In a letter to the United States Secretary of State, the Japanese government via the Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs called the law "essentially unfair and inconsistent... with the sentiments of amity and good neighborhood which have presided over the relations between the two countries," and noted that Japan felt it was "in disregard of the spirit of the existing treaty between Japan and the United States." The law was meant to discourage immigration from Asia, and to create an inhospitable climate for immigrants already living in California.
History and context
Leading up to the passage of the 1913 Alien Land Law, there had been growing anti-Asian prejudice in California and in the United States in general, first against the Chinese during the 19th century, culminating with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and then against the Japanese during the 20th century. Anti-Japanese sentiment was often expressed in racist Yellow Peril arguments.
In 1900, there was an influx of over 12,000 Japanese immigrants to the US mainland, many of whom had just been released from indentured labor with Hawaii's 1898 annexation. Many Japanese immigrants settled in California and relocated to rural areas after they initially landed in cities. Farming became the major economic foundation for the Japanese population in California, and they saw it as a way to prove their productive abilities and to establish a sense of permanency in their new nation. Gradually, many moved from farm labor into truck farming and filled the niche market for perishable crops. By 1915, three quarters of the vegetables consumed by Los Angeles residents were grown by Japanese.
The Woodrow Wilson administration discouraged the legislation and sought to persuade Democratic lawmakers to vote against it.
The measure passed the Senate by 35–2 on May 2, 1913 while the measure passed the Assembly on May 3, 1913 by 72–3.
The Alien Land Laws were invalidated in 1952 by the Supreme Court of California as a violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in Sei Fujii v. California. Fujii was a longtime Los Angeles resident, but was not a U.S. citizen. He alleged that the law violated the California and United States Constitutions, and that it also went against the spirit of the United Nations Charter to which the United States was bound by treaty. The California District Court of Appeal had decided in 1950 that the Alien Land Law was in violation of Articles 55 and 56 of the United Nations Charter. The Supreme Court of California then ordered the case transferred for hearing and settlement, as it was determined to be a sufficiently important question of law.
Criticism
The laws are widely held to have been discriminatory measures specifically targeting the Japanese, spurred by fears about the increasing number of Japanese immigrants settling in California. The choice to apply the laws only to those aliens ineligible for citizenship rather than to all aliens meant that European aliens would not be affected. Because of this, the bill was decidedly directed at Asians and specifically at the Japanese, who had become a strong presence in the agricultural labor market as well as in the control of farms. The Alien Land Laws were part of a larger trend of attempted discrimination against the Japanese through policy in California during the early 20th century.