Anti-Chinese Movement: Equality And Discrimination In The United States

With riots and protests to his previous veto of the bill, President Chester Arthur signed “An Act to Execute Certain Treaty Stipulations Relating to the Chinese” into law.” Nicknamed the Chinese Exclusion Act, it was one of the first Federal laws that discriminated against immigrants by their ethnicity. It remained law for over sixty years before Congress repealed it in 1943 to help improve Chinese morale against Japan. While originally intending to stay law for only ten years, it was renewed many times. In 1892, it was renewed as The Geary Act and in 1902 it was made permanent; requiring that Chinese immigrants carry with them there certificate of residence.The hostility against Chinese immigrants had been going on for decades prior to the Exclusion Act, going as far back as the end of the California Gold Rush. While Chinese immigrants were often discriminated it was at a local, not federal level. The Chinese Exclusion Act was the Gilded era’s worst policy because it negatively helped redefine the US federal government's stance on immigrants, had many people openly opposing it, and the arguments for the Act were mostly untrue.

In 1879 an anti-Chinese play was created by Henry Grimm; the point of the document was the problem of Chinese people taking over American jobs, this was written in San Francisco, CA. In 1879 there was an anti-Chinese sentiment, the railroad was completed, and a high number act of violence against the Chinese. The document targets the government figures and the America public. This document has a bias towards an argument against Chinese and the

The Chinese Exclusion act banned all Chinese people moving to America. Chinese people emigrated to California in 1848 during the California Gold Rush. Massive amounts of Chinese people moved to the west Coast to make money and return home to the Qing Empire. They were mainly drawn to the west coast as a way to prosper economically. Many were discriminated against and given low wages, and had poor

In 1965, the last legal barrier to Chinese immigrants fell with the signing of a new law that ended immigration quotas based on race. In the 19th and early 20th centuries the story of the Chinese in America was primarily a legal drama, played out on the nation’s borders and in courts. After the new immigration law went into effect, it became a personal story told by one individual and by one family at a time.

One of the first significant pieces of federal legislation aimed at restricting immigration was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned Chinese laborers from coming to America. Californians had agitated for the new law, blaming the Chinese, who were willing to work for less, for a decline in wages.The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first significant law restricting immigration into the United States. Those on the West Coast were especially prone to attribute declining wages and economic ills on the despised Chinese workers. Although the Chinese composed only .002 percent of the nation’s population, Congress passed the exclusion act to placate worker demands and assuage prevalent concerns about maintaining white “racial purity.”

When they arrived in America most of the Chinese immigrants moved west. Most of the Chinese immigrants moved west because they wanted to get jobs in rural areas and build homes for their families. A lot of Chinese immigrants got jobs working on building railroads. The Chinese immigrants were very good at this job, because they got paid very low wages, and that affected the pay rates of white Americans, European immigrants, and Russian immigrants. In the 1882 Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act. This act stated that Chinese laborers could not enter the country, because chinese immigrants accepted low wages, and also affected the pay rates of others. However Immigrants from Italy and Russia did not have to go through this. They also had an easier time getting jobs because of

Instead, they stayed in America for good. The Chinese immigrants now wished to assimilate their own culture and ideas with the American ideas. Americans, mostly Nativists, were extremely bothered by this because the Americans did not want the Chinese to bring their alien culture to America (Document 1). Other groups, who resented other races from assimilating, organized classes so the immigrants can learn the American language and way. They said immigrants should become citizens by learning the “American language.” They thought if the people that come to America and don’t learn the way of the Americans, then this country will soon be just like the old country, the country which they have already left (Document 3). Resentment over immigration still arose within the United States.

Chinese Exclusion Act was a law that passed by Congress on May 6 of 1882, that halted the immigration of the Chinese laborers for a span of 10 years and denied neutralization to the existing Chinese in the United States. Following an economic crisis in the late 19th century that left many without jobs and slowed down the expansion of the Western States, many Chinese immigrants laborers were blamed for the falling of wages and lack of employment opportunities. The Chinese laborer faced violence, social isolation, and discriminatory laws that was included in the passage of the exclusion act. Although the act had little effect on the U.S’s economy beyond the Chinese community, it set a lasting effect for immigration policy, it was the first U.S law the refusal to admit members of a specific ethnic group or nationality. Since Chinese immigration was helping the U.S’s economy bloom. Why the sudden stop of only one ethnic group coming to the U.S? What social, economic, and political caused the Chinese Exclusion Act?

In many cases throughout America’s history immigrants have settled here for many different reasons. In conclusion these reasons were known as push and pull factors. Push factors are factors that repel migrants from their country. And pull factors are factors that attract migrants to move. In my main immigrant group which is the Chinese, there were several push and pull factors that I will be mentioning. First, some of the push factors that were included in my group were the fact that there were a lot of disasters. For example there was draught, poverty, a famine, and floods were also included in these disasters. To state these factors more specifically, it was around the 1840s and 1850s when

The Chinese Exclusion Act was established in 1882, in which the first time United States prevent a group of immigrants with nationality (Lee 4), marked United States’ from welcoming nation to an enclosed and discriminative nation, has monumental impact on each Chinese immigrants and culture of the entire American Chinese community (6). The poor conditions and lack of opportunities in the 19th century China and the Chinese’s hope of accumulating wealth to support their families in China fostered the huge influx of Chinese immigrants to United States. The discovery of gold in California also fuelled many Chinese’s dream of fast wealth (112). Due to the need for mass labour stemming from industrialization and high productivity of Chinese labours, employers would enthusiastically hire Chinese labour, which in turn sparked the increasing competition with the local workers and a growing anti-Chinese sentiment (114).

In the late 1800s, America passed a fierce act due to the rising tension between the Chinese immigrants and whites. Chinese immigrants were troubled with biased laws and stereotyping. The Chinese Exclusion Act was one of these law. It... The immigrants were stereotyped as barbarians, anti-christian, anti-white, or as slaves. They were called heathens, racial slurs, and much worse; and the Chinese were seen as idolaters, the lowest, and the vilest. Some may argue they were taking over jobs because of how they were willing to work for less. But ultimately, the most influential factor in why Americans passed the Chinese Exclusion Act was racial prejudice toward the Chinese.

After the first wave of Chinese immigrants arrived in the United States in the early 1840s during the California Gold Rush, many Chinese people continued to travel across the Pacific, escaping poor conditions in China with hopes and ambitions for a better life in America. Many more Chinese immigrants began arriving into the 1860s on the Pacific coast for work in other areas such as the railroad industry. The immigrants noticed an increasing demand for their labor because of their readiness to work for low wages. Many of those who arrived did not plan to stay long, and therefore there was no push for their naturalization. The immigrants left a country with thousands of years of a “decaying feudal system,” corruption, a growing

53 “The Chinese Exclusion Act had a profound long-term impact on immigration policy. As the first law barring entry to people of a specific race or nationality, it served as a model for twentieth-century restrictions.” Edwards explains the beginnings of

Lowe makes note that throughout history, people native of the large Asian countries such as the China, Japanese, Korean, (Asian) Indian, have long played “crucial roles in the building and the sustaining of America”. And for anyone to challenge that statement would be a fool. For instance, a great deal of Hawaii’s plantation immigrant workers was of Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino descent. But often, their efforts have been left unnoticed, left

While the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed long ago, it remains as the first act to single out an ethnic group of people and ban them from immigrating into the United States. In a Washington Post article by Yana Wang, she states, “Within a decade, its campaign succeeded, contributing to President Chester Arthur’s 1882 signing of the Chinese Exclusion Act: the first federal law to exclude a specific ethnic group from immigrating to the country” (washingtonpost.com). Racism and segregation has existed in America for a long time, and many laws have been passed that discriminate against different races, but this act is still unprecedented. It openly named an ethnic group and excluded them from citizenship, a blatantly racist act that led to the