The Chinese Exclusion Act Of 1882

Besides, in congress debates, people talked about racism and discriminatory prejudice against Chinese and African American. One senator said this, “the Caucasian race has a right, considering its superiority of intellectual force and mental vigor, to look down upon every other branch of the human family…we are the superior race today.” The Chinese Exclusion Act began being harsher and harsher. Chinese immigrants who have right to return were also forced to go back to China in 1889 by the Scott Act. Later on, other Asians were also prohibited from entering the United States. This is the first law of prohibition of race-based restrictions. After 1882, Chinese visitors who want admission to America had to take strict screening process so that they could prove that they met the requirements for entering. In 1892, the Geary Act was enacted. The Act has three requirements. One is to extend the ban on Chinese immigrants for ten years. Two is to create a presumption that persons of Chinese descent were residing in the United States unlawfully. Three is a requirement for labor to acquire a certificate confirming their legal status.

During this time the Chinese Exclusion Act was in place, forbidding the entrance of Chinese immigrants into the United States.

The Chinese exclusion act was a movement that prohibited Chinese immigration; people used it as a discrimination against Chinese people. In one year Chinese immigration dropped from 40,000 to 23. This shows how people where violent and discriminant to Chinese fellows.

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

American citizens despised the Chinese workers because they worked very hard and followed instructions for very little pay, as stated in a speech given by a German immigrant on the Chinese exclusion act he said “It is almost impossible for a poor white servant girl to find employment in a white family. No! The mistress of the house wants a Chinaman. Why? He is very handy. She can say, ‘John Chinaman, do this’, and John does it, and John never says a word”. The white immigrants assumed that the Chinese were doing this to spite them and steal the jobs the white immigrants and American citizens thought they were entitled to. Another example of Americans and white immigrants accusing the Chinese of taking

In 1882 the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed, and Alien Contract Labor Laws of 1885 and 1887 prohibited certain laborers from immigrating to the United States. " Immigration Act of 1882 levied a head tax of fifty cents on each

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.”

Besides the Page Law, the Chinese exclusion act of 1882 affected the characteristics of Chinese immigrants the most. In 1882, Chinese people were excluded because they became a threat to American society. Under the Chinese exclusion act, the number of Chinese was decreased and the bachelor society was formed. The bachelor society was a reaction to the Chinese exclusion act and a shelter for Chinese people to live in. A great example of bachelor society is Chinatown. Because of the influence of the Chinese exclusion act of 1882, Chinese immigrants concentrated in Chinatown and had special characteristics. In Chinatown, the first characteristic of the Chinese immigrants were mostly men because Chinese women were excluded. Besides, most Chinese immigrants formed split households in Chinatown because the Chinese exclusion act prohibited the Chinese family unification and the interracial marriage between White and Chinese.

In 1849, an inundation of Chinese immigrants came to the United States to take part in the California gold rush. Relations between the Chinese and Americans started off neutral, but soon conflicts arose. White workers saw Chinese as a threat to their status and tried to solve this issue by passing the Chinese Exclusion Act; this severely limited the number of Chinese allowed to immigrate into the country at the time. Although this compromise satisfied the white protests, it only lead to more conflicts with how the Chinese were treated during immigration. These conflicts would not be resolved for another 61 years.

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 1892, the government required all new immigrants to undergo a physical examination. If they had a certain diseases, they were either faced quarantine, a time isolation to prevent spread of a disease or they were deported. The Chinese immigrants  tended to live in their own ethnic communities and this helped them avoid conflicts with non-Asian neighbors. Although, the union blamed Chinese immigrants for high unemployment and low wages in California. Others claimed that Chinese were not worthy of being Americans and some claimed that Asians were inferior to white Americans. These claims from the unions had Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. The act prohibited Chinese laborers from entering the country. In 1906, the Japanese government found out that Japanese kids were being segregated from white kids, in which they protested to the United State President Theodore Roosevelt. As a result, President Roosevelt and the Japanese government reached an agreement called the Gentlemen's Agreement. This compromise had San Francisco agreed to not segregate Japanese kids and Japan to stop issuing passports to laborers. In 1902, the Newlands National Reclamation Act was established to promote the irrigation of southwestern lands. New farmland meant new jobs in the Southwest.  In this case, Mexican Laborers were hired to work on farms, ranches, and mines. The new opportunities  were referred as a “pull”

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).

Interestingly, State and Federal courts still had the authority to deport Chinese resident aliens. President Chester Arthur passed it on May 6, 1882. Such a devastating act was a culmination of hatred towards Chinese people that had been brewing since the California Gold Rush. During the California Gold Rush, Chinese people had an affinity for striking gold. Jealousy from white miners pushed them towards cities like San Francisco where they started businesses (Yuning Wu).

    Around the time of the Chinese Exclusion Act, there was the California Gold Rush of 1849, the American Civil War (1861-1865), and The Treaty of Tianjin (1858)/The Burlingame Treaty (1868). One of the first events that compelled Chinese immigrants to travel to the United States was the gold rush: “Chinese immigrants arrived on U.S. shores between the California gold rush in 1849 and 1882…” (Chineseimmigrationact). Also, the treaty of Burlingame, “… ultimately reinforced U.S. trade interests with China under the principle of the most-favored-nation concept, and it ensured a steady flow of low-cost Chinese immigrant labor for U.S. firms” (U.S. Department of State).  The Treaty of Burlingame, which was an extension of the Treaty of

From the 1850s, political agitation and financial weights at home provoked many Chinese settlers to move toward the western areas of the United States looking for transitory work. Many took low-paid employments as unskilled workers in mining, development, horticulture, assembling, or administration ventures. The 1890 decennial census reports a Chinese-conceived inhabitant populace surpassing 100,000; records demonstrate that almost 300,000 Chinese workers entered the United States in the vicinity of 1850 and 1889, however antiquarians evaluate that the same number of as half at last came back to China. This influx of Chinese movement was joined by developing hostility to Chinese Migrants causing ethnic segregation, in the U.S. Congress passed the Chinese Rejection Act in 1882 which restricted Chinese work relocation to the United States and banned Chinese inhabitants from getting U.S. citizenship. In spite of the fact that the law was canceled in 1943, minimal Chinese movement was allowed until the point that the Immigration and