The History of the Chinese Immigrants into the United States

In China, since the reform and opening-up, there have been two waves of immigration in the last century late 70s and early 90s. With the advent of a new century, China’s economy has come into the phase of rapid development and its informatization construction has been developed at a high speed. Surprisingly, at that time, there is growing the third emigration which is a larger scale one. Among these immigrants, the professional elite and the proportion of affluent people increases year by year.

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.

Also, citizens became addicted, and the drug eventually killed thousands of people. China’s actions angered Britain politicians even though opium was illegal in Britain as well. But was a result, war started between the two countries. In 1842, the treaty of Nanking ended the war. It was the first unequal treaty with Britain and it said that Chinese had to give up Hong Kong to Britain for ninty-nine years, the British would live in China by extraterritoriality at four ports, distribution of opium would continue and Christain missionaries will be set up throughout China. When China couldn’t meet the ridiculous requirements of the treaty, the second Opium War began in 1956. As a result, Britain won again by the Treaty of Tientsin. The treaty asked to open more ports to outer nations, let foreign leaders into the capital Beijing, and legalized the distribution and use of opium. Their situation was dangerously bad.

China has 5000 years of history which experienced wars, collapses, failures and successes. The Opium War in the year 1839 and 1856 marked the changing point of China’s trade policy with foreigners, especially with British in opium and tea. China changed from getting tributes to being forced to sign the Nanjing Treaty and Tianjing Treaty with British and French. Due to China’s over confidence and unwelcome attitude toward foreigners and opium, it caused the British to declare the Opium War to China which made Chinese suffer for many years, but at the same time it also forced China to open its doors to the foreigners.

Since its founding, the United States has attracted immigrants from all over the world and consists of a variety of different cultures. Immigration has had an enormous impact on American society and economy and shaped the country remarkably.

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.

Immigration was a crucial aspect of the Gilded Age although it brought many issues to the USA. The large influx of Chinese brought out America’s racist views and caused the economy to be affected negatively. To begin with in the California gold rush, the large number of Chinese were blamed for taking all the gold and they were forcefully relocated to the city to work labor jobs. This large growth of laborers caused businesses to lower their average wages and non-immigrant Americans were unable to find jobs. Ones that did already have jobs were angered by the lower wages. Since the economy in the 1870s was in decline, Anti-Chinese groups, such as the Supreme Order of Caucasians, formed to protest against Chinese immigrants all across USA. Labor

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

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

Many immigrants came into the United States during the nineteenth century; some of them being Chinese. They came here through Angel Island to find better lives than in China, but it did not work out that way for most. These people faced much discrimination in this new country, such as working cheap jobs and being treated unfairly, but eventually they began trying to conquer these unfair acts towards them.

The motivations for the Chinese to come to the United States are similar to most immigrants. These motivations are what most people call "The American Dream." These could be looking for a better life, having a better job, running away from political issues. However, for Chinese these American dreams were not too easy to achieve at first compared to other immigrants. Chinese suffered a lot more obstacles and discriminations because they are relatively small and easy to be targeted on. Even more the legal system passed a law in 1963 forbidding Chinese to testify against white men in court. This anti-Chinese action was most critical in the Pacific Coast; as a result, it caused the dispersion of Chinese that had settled in California to the

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).

While thousands of European immigrants came into the United States on the East Coast, Chinese immigrants arrived on the West coast in smaller numbers. Approximately 200,00 Chinese immigrants arrived between 1851-1883. Beginning in 1910, Chinese immigrants entered the United States through the Angel Island Immigration Station, where they might be detained in barracks for weeks or months. Pull factors for Chinese immigrants included the California Gold Rush in 1848 and jobs working on the construction of the transcontinental railroad (1862-1869) and other railroads in the West. In the later years of this wave of immigration, Chinese immigrants worked as “stoop laborers” in farming, mining and also domestic service such as laundering. Friction

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