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Chinese Exclusion Act
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the similar Canadian law, see Chinese Immigration Act of 1923.
The Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States federal law signed by Chester
A. Arthur on May 8, 1882, following revisions made in 1880 to the Burlingame
Treaty of 1868. Those revisions allowed the U.S. to suspend immigration,
and Congress subsequently acted quickly to implement the suspension of
Chinese immigration, a ban that was intended to last 10 years. This law was
repealed by the Magnuson Act on December 17, 1943.
Contents
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* 1 Background
* 2 Chinese Gold Rush in California
* 3 The Act
* 4 Effects and aftermath
* 5 Repeal and current status
* 6 See also
* 7 References
* 8 External links
Background
Chinese immigrant workers building the Transcontinental railroad.
Main article: Chinese immigration to the United States
The first significant Chinese immigration to the United States began with
the California Gold Rush of 1848-1855, and continued with subsequent large
labor projects, such as the building of the First Transcontinental Railroad.
During the early stages of the gold rush, when surface gold was plentiful,
the Chinese were tolerated, if not well-received.[1] As gold became harder
to find and competition increased, animosity toward the Chinese and other
foreigners increased. After being forcibly driven from the mines, most
Chinese settled in enclaves in cities, mainly San Francisco, and took up low
end wage labor such as restaurant work and laundry just to earn enough to
live off of. With the post Civil War economy in decline by the 1870s, anti-
Chinese animosity became politicized by labor leader Denis Kearney and his
Workingman's Party[2] as well as by California Governor John Bigler, both of
whom blamed Chinese "coolies" for depressed wage levels. Another
significant anti-Chinese group organized in California during this same era
was the Supreme Order of Caucasians with some 60 chapters statewide.[
citation needed]
Chinese Gold Rush in California
Early on the California government did not wish to exclude Chinese migrant
workers because they provided essential tax revenue which helped fill the
fiscal gap of California.[citation needed] Only later, when there was enough
money did the government cease to oppose Chinese exclusion. By 1860 the
Chinese were the largest immigrant group in California. The Chinese workers
provided cheap labor and did not use any of the government infrastructure (
schools, hospitals, etc.) because the Chinese migrant population was
predominantly made up of healthy male adults.[3] As time passed and more and
more Chinese migrants arrived in California violence would often break out
in cities such as Los Angeles. By 1878 Congress decided to act and passed
legislation excluding the Chinese, but this was vetoed by President Hayes.
California, in its zeal for excluding the Chinese, declared a holiday on
March 6, 1881, in order to hold widespread demonstrations to support the
anti-Chinese legislation. Once the Chinese Exclusion Act was finally passed
in 1882, California went further in its discrimination against the Chinese
by passing various laws that were later held to be unconstitutional.[4]
After the act was passed most Chinese families were faced with a dilemma:
stay in the United States alone or go back to China to reunite with their
families.[5] Newspapers around the country and especially in California
started to discredit and blame the Chinese for most things, e.g., white
unemployment. The police also discriminated against the Chinese by using the
slightest opportunity to arrest them. Although there was widespread dislike
for the Chinese, some capitalists and entrepreneurs resisted their
exclusion based on economic factors.[6]
The Act
The Chinese Exclusion Act was one of the most significant restrictions on
free immigration in U.S. history. The Act excluded Chinese "skilled and
unskilled laborers and Chinese employed in mining" from entering the country
for ten years under penalty of imprisonment and deportation.[7][8] The few
Chinese non-laborers who wished to immigrate had to obtain certification
from the Chinese government that they were qualified to immigrate, which
tended to be difficult to prove.[8] Volpp argues that the "Chinese Exclusion
Act" is a misnomer, in that it is assumed to be the starting point of
Chinese exclusionary laws in the United States. She suggests attending to
the intersections of race, gender, and U.S. citizenship in order to both
understand the restraints of such a historical tendency and make visible
Chinese female immigration experiences, including the Page Act of 1875.[9]
The Act also affected Asians who had already settled in the United States.
Any Chinese who left the United States had to obtain certifications for
reentry, and the Act made Chinese immigrants permanent aliens by excluding
them from U.S. citizenship.[7][8] After the Act's passage, Chinese men in
the U.S. had little chance of ever reuniting with their wives, or of
starting families in their new homes.[7]
Amendments made in 1884 tightened the provisions that allowed previous
immigrants to leave and return, and clarified that the law applied to ethnic
Chinese regardless of their country of origin. The Scott Act (1888)
expanded upon the Chinese Exclusion Act, prohibiting reentry after leaving
the U.S. The Act was renewed for ten years by the 1892 Geary Act, and again
with no terminal date in 1902.[8] When the act was extended in 1902, it
required "each Chinese resident to register and obtain a certificate of
residence. Without a certificate, he or she faced deportation."[8]
Between 1882 and 1905, about 10,000 Chinese appealed against negative
immigration decisions to federal court, usually via a petition for habeas
corpus.[10] In most of these cases, the courts ruled in favor of the
petitioner.[10] Except in cases of bias or negligence, these petitions were
barred by an act that passed Congress in 1894 and was upheld by the U.S.
Supreme Court in U.S. vs Lem Moon Sing (1895). In U.S. vs Ju Toy (1905), the
U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed that the port inspectors and the secretary of
commerce had final authority on who could be admitted. Ju Toy's petition
was thus barred despite the fact that the district court found that he was
an American citizen. The Supreme Court determined that refusing entry at a
port does not require due process and is legally equivalent to refusing
entry at a land crossing. This ruling triggered a brief boycott of U.S.
goods in China.
One of the critics of the Chinese Exclusion Act was the anti-slavery/anti-
imperialist Republican Senator George Frisbie Hoar of Massachusetts who
described the Act as "nothing less than the legalization of racial
discrimination."[11]
The laws were driven largely by racial concerns; immigration of persons of
other races was unlimited during this period.[12]
On the other hand, many people strongly supported the Chinese Exclusion Act,
including the Knights of Labor,[13] a labor union which called for improved
conditions for workers, who supported it because it believed that
industrialists were using Chinese workers as a wedge to keep wages low and
conditions poor. Among labor and leftist organizations, the Industrial
Workers of the World were the sole exception to this pattern. The IWW openly
opposed the Chinese Exclusion Act from its inception in 1905.[14]
Effects and aftermath
A political cartoon from 1882, showing a Chinese man being barred entry to
the "Golden Gate of Liberty". The caption reads, "We must draw the line
somewhere, you know."
Certificate of identity issued to Yee Wee Thing certifying that he is the
son of a US citizen, issued Nov. 21, 1916. This was necessary for his
immigration from China to the United States.
For all practical purposes, the Exclusion Act, along with the restrictions
that followed it, froze the Chinese community in place in 1882, and
prevented it from growing and assimilating into U.S. society as European
immigrant groups did.[7] Limited immigration from China continued until the
repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943. From 1910 to 1940, the Angel
Island Immigration Station on what is now Angel Island State Park in San
Francisco Bay served as the processing center for most of the 56,113 Chinese
immigrants who are recorded as immigrating or returning from China; upwards
of 30% more who showed up were returned to China. Furthermore, after the
1906 San Francisco earthquake, which destroyed City Hall and the Hall of
Records, many immigrants (known as "paper sons") claimed that they had
familial ties to resident Chinese-American citizens. Whether these were true
or not cannot be proven.
The Chinese Exclusion Act gave rise to the first great wave of commercial
human smuggling, an activity that later spread to include other national and
ethnic groups.[15]
Later, the Immigration Act of 1924 would restrict immigration even further,
excluding all classes of Chinese immigrants and extending restrictions to
other Asian immigrant groups.[7] Until these restrictions were relaxed in
the middle of the twentieth century, Chinese immigrants were forced to live
a life apart, and to build a society in which they could survive on their
own.[7]
Furthermore, The Chinese Exclusion Act did not address the problems that
whites were facing; in fact, the Chinese were quickly and eagerly replaced
by the Japanese, who assumed the role of the Chinese in society. Unlike the
Chinese, some Japanese were even able to climb the rungs of society by
setting up businesses or becoming truck farmers.[16] However, the Japanese
were later targeted in the National Origins Act of 1924, which banned
immigration from east Asia entirely.
Repeal and current status
The Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed by the 1943 Magnuson Act, which
permitted Chinese nationals already residing in the country to become
naturalized citizens. It also allowed a national quota of 105 Chinese
immigrants per year, although large scale Chinese immigration did not occur
until the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965. Despite the fact that the
exclusion act was repealed in 1943, the law in California that Chinese
people were not allowed to marry whites was not repealed until 1948.[17][18]
Even today, although all its constituent sections have long been repealed,
Chapter 7 of Title 8 of the United States Code is headed, "Exclusion of
Chinese."[19] It is the only chapter of the 15 chapters in Title 8 (Aliens
and Nationality) that is completely focused on a specific nationality or
ethnic group. |
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