Chinese Immigration Of The United States

After civil war had settled down, many immigrants came to America to live from many countries such as Germany, Ireland, and England. There are as many as 12 million immigrants at this time. Regarding Chinese immigration, they immigrated to the United States from 1849 to 1882. Between this period, America had California Gold Rush, which is one of the reasons Chinese people immigrated. Because the Chinese Exclusion Act was taken into practice, no more Chinese people could immigrate to the United States after 1882. Chinese immigration is the divergent point for Chinese’ lives who lived in America.

In 1848, California struck gold at Sutter's Mill, California. Chinese immigrants now had yet another incentive to go west in search of their fortune. For the most part, these immigrants were young male peasants who came in

This lithograph depicts a common camp scene at the mines in California. The Gold Rush drew thousands of Chinese workers to America. Besides fleeing from poverty and bad political situations in their home country, the one common goal was to reach economic wealth. But as much as they were searching for a better life, most of the Chinese immigrants did not intend to stay in the country permanently (Daniels 11).

The late 19th century marked a new chapter in American Capitalism. Hawaii and California were both looking for cheap laborers to fuel their new system at this time, and American planters found their answer in Chinese and Japanese immigrants. Even though Chinese and Japanese immigrants both flocked to America, the two countries had different reasons for leaving their homes. American laborers, on the other hand, were appalled by the surplus of laborers and demanded the government to monitor these Asian immigrants. While capitalism pulled Chinese and Japanese people in search of wealth to America, the American government held a strong grip on those that were allowed into the country.

Beginning in the late 19th century and continuing to the early 20th century, many Chinese families struggled to gain social, economic, and educational stature in both China and the United States. In the book, A Transnational History of a Chinese Family, by Haiming Liu, we learn about the Chang family rooted in Kaiping County, China, who unlike many typical Chinese families’ exemplified hard-work and strong cultural values allowing them to pursue an exceptional Chinese-American lifestyle. Even with immigration laws preventing Chinese laborers and citizens to enter unless maintaining merchant status, Yitang and Sam Chang managed to sponsor approximately 40 relatives to the states with their businesses in herbalist

Before World-War II, the Chinese immigrants to the U.S had many characteristics. First, the Chinese immigrants mainly came from mainland China, such as the Guangdong province. The Chinese immigrants mainly came from the Guangdong province of China because of the location of Guangdong province. The Guangdong province was close to coastal areas where Guangong people could take the boasts and migrate to America. Also, Guangdong people was far away from the Chinese government's control. Therefore, Chinese immigrants could easily migrated from the Guangdong province of China to America. Second, most of the Chinese immigrants were poor and came from rural areas in China. They migrated to America because they suffered from poor harvests and

The reasons for Chinese women to immigrate to America included natural disaster and internal problems in China in the 1840’s and 1850’s, the desire for family reunion, economic pursuit, and personal fulfillment. Problems that China faced involved a severe drought, the flooding of the Yangtze River, floods, and famine. This all amounted to ruined land, a rebellious peasantry, and a failing economy. Another problem China

“Push factors like Chinese facing military and political chaos, harsh economic conditions, collapsing of the feudal system, a lack of business spirit due to the ineffectiveness of trade regulations, high taxes, lack of private investments and the dream of prosperity in America lcontributed to Chinese immigration. From 1840-1900, a significant influx of Chinese immigrants came to Hawaii and United States. However, they immigrated to other countries, including Australia, Canada, Africa, South

Many groups immigrated to the United States, mostly in California, for land, jobs, wealth and freedom. One of the main ethnic groups of immigrants that came to California to work were the Chinese. Many companies used the Chinese men to work on railroads that connected America through transportation that later helped develop modern day America.

Before the war, Chinese Americans were known as non-citizen immigrants who aren’t allow to go back to visit China. The male immigrants can’t to bring their wives over from China and they weren't allowed to marry whites legally. In fact any white American woman that married a non-citizen Chinese man automatically lost her citizenship under US law. This left Chinese communities across the United States empty of children, filled with aging bachelors, and inexorably dying away. Ironically the renewal of the Chinese American community came about because of the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906 that destroyed immigration and birth records across the city. The US Supreme Court in Wong Kim Ark v. United States in 1898 had affirmed citizenship

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).

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

In the 1850’s, Chinese immigrants began entering California in search of gold and the California dream. They had heard that California was the new frontier, a frontier that would provide them with the opportunity for economic riches. Young and ambitious, many of these Chinese immigrants quickly married in their homeland and set out for the gold rush, promising to return (with wealth). Likewise, in the 1880s, when the state of California was undergoing rapid economic transformation, Japanese immigrants — just as young and ambitious as their Chinese counterparts — set out for America where they had heard the streets were “paved with gold.” But little did these Chinese and Japanese immigrants know that what they would discover in California

When thousands of Chinese migrated to California after the gold rush the presence caused concern and debate from other Californians. This discussion, popularly called the “Chinese Question,” featured in many of the contemporary accounts of the time. In the American Memory Project’s “California: As I Saw It” online collection, which preserves books written in California from 1849-1900, this topic is debated, especially in conjunction with the Chinese Exclusion Act. The nine authors selected offer varying analyses on Chinese discrimination and this culminating act. Some give racist explanations, but the majority point towards the perceived economic competition between

In the mid 19th century, America was viewed as a hotspot for freedom and wealth. When the noise of the gold rush flooded the world, immigrants started to see America more appetizing than ever. The Chinese saw America as a place to have a fresh start and as a place of refuge because of it’s generosity, so they immigrated to the west in great numbers. There was a large Chinese population in Virginia and all along the Pacific coast. Writers Mark Twain and Maxine Hong Kingston both wrote in great detail about the Chinese Immigrants. They went into detail about the immigrants and how they came over and why. Although Twain and Kingston both wrote about the immigrants in a positive light, Twain was sympathetic of the immigrants and Kingston focused more on their image and her ancestors.