In the late 19th century, Chinese immigrants were benefiting the U.S. economy. Many communities in the West welcomed them, regardless of their legal status. They provided labor for agriculture, logging, mining, and manufacturing; dug quarries by hand and helped build the transcontinental railroad; and contributed to the growth of towns and cities through service industries such as laundries and restaurants. At the same time, Chinese immigrants were forced to endure discrimination and lower wages than their white counterparts. They faced hostility and prejudice due to the perception that they robbed locals of jobs. Fueled by economic anxieties and racial prejudice in the 1880s, white agricultural laborers in present-day Issaquah, Washington, murdered Chinese laborers. The perpetrators, brought to trial, were acquitted of their charges.
Lawrence Kelly capitalized on the Asian exchange. “The Vancouver–Puget Sound area was widely known as a ‘smugglers’ paradise’ in the opium trade, and Chinese and their American or Canadian guides used the same boats and routes to make the journey to the United States.” Men like Kelly, already active in the cross-border smuggling of products such as opium and wool, found a lucrative new niche by smuggling Chinese people, following the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which curtailed lawful Chinese immigration to the U.S. (British Columbia would later impose the same curtailment.) Victoria became a hub for such immigrants, who could arrive legally in Canada in pursuit of job opportunities. Some chose to pay contract smugglers who conducted them across the U.S. border. Kelly and a cohort trafficked Chinese expats by weaving throughout the San Juan islands into safe and secret harbors on U.S. shores.
His sometime-partner Ben Ure, like Kelly, married an Indigenous woman. Ure lived at the north end of Whidbey Island on an eleven-acre island that took his name. There the couple ran a dance hall and saloon. Ure’s wife aided his hide-and-seek smuggling operation. Local lore says he camped her on nearby Strawberry Island in Deception Pass, for its view to the west, to deploy a signal fire after dark to bring ashore the Chinese that the men had loaded in Victoria. The same lore claims Ure devised the nasty practice of tying up the Chinese in weighted burlap bags. If Customs agents approached, the story goes, he flung them overboard. Immigrants had to be reckless and desperate to agree to be bagged up like corpses at the outset of their trip to the promised land.