Chinese Exclusion Act
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was a United States federal law signed by President Chester A. Arthur on May 6, 1882, prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers for 10 years. The law made exceptions for travelers and diplomats. The Act also denied Chinese residents already in the US the ability to become citizens and Chinese people traveling in or out of the country were required to carry a certificate identifying their status or risk deportation. It was the first major US law implemented to prevent all members of a specific national group from immigrating to the United States, and therefore significantly shaped twentieth-century immigration policy.
Passage of the law was preceded by growing anti-Chinese sentiment and anti-Chinese violence, as well as various policies targeting Chinese migrants. The act followed the Angell Treaty of 1880, a set of revisions to the US–China Burlingame Treaty of 1868 that allowed the US to suspend Chinese immigration. The act was initially intended to last for 10 years, but was renewed and strengthened in 1892 with the Geary Act and made permanent in 1902. These laws attempted to stop all Chinese immigration into the United States for ten years, with exceptions for diplomats, teachers, students, merchants, and travelers. The laws were widely evaded.
In 1898, the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Wong Kim Ark that the law did not prevent the children of Chinese immigrants born in the United States from acquiring birthright citizenship.
The law remained in force until the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Repeal Act in 1943, which repealed the exclusion and allowed 105 Chinese immigrants to enter the United States each year. Chinese immigration later increased with the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which abolished direct racial barriers, and later by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which abolished the National Origins Formula.
Background
During the 19th century, China was in a state of sociopolitical upheaval due to poverty, droughts, famines, and conflicts such as the Opium Wars and Taiping Rebellion. These conditions led to large waves of Chinese immigration to Southeast Asia, Europe and the Americas. In particular, many of the Chinese immigrants who entered the United States during the 19th century were refugees who were fleeing the Punti-Hakka Clan Wars, which claimed as many as one million lives. For this reason, most of the Chinese immigrants originated from Sze Yup and spoke Taishanese.The first significant wave of 19th-century Chinese immigration to America began with the California gold rush of 1848–1855; it 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 by white people, if not well received. However, as gold became harder to find and competition increased, animosity toward the Chinese and other foreigners increased. After being forcibly driven from mining by a mixture of state legislators and other miners, the immigrant Chinese began to settle in enclaves in cities, mainly San Francisco, and took up low-wage labor, such as restaurant and laundry work. With the post-Civil War economy in decline by the 1870s, the anti-Chinese animosity became politicized by labor leader Denis Kearney and his Workingman's Party as well as by California governor John Bigler, both of whom blamed "coolie labor" for depressed wage levels. In addition to economic pressures, US cultural products had long promoted racist views of Chinese people. Public opinion and law in California began to demonize Chinese workers and immigrants in any role, with the latter half of the 1800s seeing a series of ever more restrictive laws being placed on Chinese labor, behavior and even living conditions. While many of these legislative efforts were quickly overturned by the State Supreme Court, many more anti-Chinese laws continued to be passed in both California and nationally.
In the early 1850s, there was resistance to the idea of excluding Chinese migrant workers, since they provided essential tax revenue. The Xianfeng Emperor, who ruled China at the time, supported the exclusion because he was concerned that Chinese immigration to America would lead to a loss of labor for China. But toward the end of the decade, the financial situation improved and state level exclusion laws were passed. In 1858, the California Legislature passed a law that made it illegal for any person "of the Chinese or Mongolian races" to enter the state; however, this law was struck down by the State Supreme Court in 1862.
The Chinese immigrant workers provided cheap labor and did not use government schools, hospitals, and such because the Chinese migrant population was predominantly healthy male adults. January 1868, the Senate ratified the Burlingame Treaty with China, allowing an unrestricted flow of Chinese into the country. As time passed and more and more Chinese migrants arrived in the United States and California in particular, violence often broke out in cities such as Los Angeles. The North Adams strike of 1870, broken by the replacement of all workers by 75 Chinese men was the trigger that sparked widespread working-class protest across the country, shaped legislative debate in Congress, and helped make Chinese immigration a sustained national issue.
The Page Act of 1875 banned Chinese women from entering the United States to prevent the settlement of families, but continued to allow Chinese men and their labor.
Key to the transformation of Chinese immigration from a Californian to a national question was the political climate in 1876. This year was an election year and was exceedingly close with both parties looking to the West Coast for aid in the coming election, it was through this that Californian politicians were able to project their concerns with Chinese immigration eastward into discourse in the capital. Before 1876, Californian legislators had made various attempts to restrict Chinese immigration by targeting Chinese businesses, living spaces and the ships immigrants arrived on by way of ordinances and resultant fines, but such legislation was deemed unconstitutional through its violation of either the Burlingame Treaty, the Fourteenth Amendment, or the Civil Rights Act of 1866. In light of such failures, It became clear that the issue had to be solved by the federal government. For Californian politicians advocating against Chinese immigration, therefore, the close political competition in 1876 provided a good opportunity to propel their cause from a state issue to a national issue. The idea was that the desire for West Coast votes would compel the political parties to adopt policies to appeal to Californian voters, by making known the heavy anti-Chinese sentiment in California, Californian anti-Chinese legislators could influence political parties into adopting an anti-Chinese immigration rhetoric. This influence was conducted in a manner of ways; Firstly, throughout the spring many well-publicized anti-Chinese demonstrations were held, such as in San Francisco on April 5 which saw 20,000 people attend.
Secondly, on April 3, the California State Senate authorized an investigation on the effects of Chinese immigration on the state's culture and economy, with the findings to be sent to 'leading newspapers of the United States' and 5 copies for each member of Congress. Furthering these measures was the sending of a delegation by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to cities in the east to express anti-Chinese sentiment to crowds. Members of this delegation Philip Roach and Frank Pixley talked about the economic threat Chinese 'coolie' labor posed, but also on the perceived racial incompatibility and inferiority of Chinese immigrants, driving up fears and anxieties in other states. These remarks also found their way to senate hearings, such an example can be seen on May 1: Republican Aaron A. Sargent, the senior senator for California, addressed the senate with a vicious attack on Chinese immigration before they voted on treaty negotiations with China. The result of these efforts, among others, culminated in the overwhelming support of anti-Chinese policies by both political parties observed in their respective conventions in June. It is for these reasons then that the election year of 1876 was instrumental in changing the question of Chinese immigration from a state to a national question; The competitive political atmosphere allowed a calculated political attempt to nationalize California's Immigration grievances, as such leaders across the country were compelled to advocacy for anti-Chinese sentiment.
Numerous strikes followed the North Adams strike, notably Beaver Falls Cutlery Company in Pennsylvania and others After the economy soured in the Panic of 1873, Chinese immigrants were blamed for depressing workmen's wages. At one point, Chinese men represented nearly a quarter of all wage-earning workers in California. By 1878, Congress felt compelled to try to ban immigration from China in legislation that was later vetoed by President Rutherford B. Hayes. The title of the August 27, 1873, San Francisco Chronicle article, "The Chinese Invasion! They Are Coming, 900,000 Strong", was traced by The Atlantic as one of the roots of the 2019 anti-immigration "invasion" rhetoric. Furthermore, in 1876, the San Francisco lawyer H. N. Clement stood before a California State Committee and said: "The Chinese are upon us. How can we get rid of them? The Chinese are coming. How can we stop them?". This perfectly reflected the overall feeling of many Americans at the time, and how public officials were partly responsible in making this situation seem even more serious than it actually was.
In 1879, however, California adopted a new Constitution which explicitly authorized the state government to determine which individuals were allowed to reside in the state, and banned the Chinese from employment by corporations and state, county or municipal governments.
Three years later, after China had agreed to treaty revisions, Congress tried again to exclude working-class Chinese laborers; Senator John F. Miller of California introduced another Chinese Exclusion Act that blocked entry of Chinese laborers for a twenty-year period. The bill passed the Senate and House by overwhelming margins, but this as well was vetoed by President Chester A. Arthur, who concluded the 20-year ban to be a breach of the renegotiated treaty of 1880. That treaty allowed only a "reasonable" suspension of immigration. Eastern newspapers praised the veto, while it was condemned in the Western states. Congress was unable to override the veto, but passed a new bill reducing the immigration ban to ten years. The House of Representatives voted 201–37, with 51 abstentions, to pass the act. Although he still objected to this denial of entry to Chinese laborers, President Arthur acceded to the compromise measure, signing the Chinese Exclusion Act into law on May 6, 1882.
After the act was passed, most Chinese workers were faced with a dilemma: stay in the United States alone or return to China to reunite with their families. Although widespread dislike for the Chinese persisted well after the law itself was passed, of note is that some capitalists and entrepreneurs resisted their exclusion because they accepted lower wages.
When the exclusion act expired in 1892, Congress extended it 10 more years in the form of the Geary Act. This extension was then made permanent in 1902 which led to every Chinese American ordered to gain a certificate of residence from the US government or face deportation. This act regulated Chinese immigration into the 20th century.