Chinese Exclusion Act

The Chinese Exclusion Act was a law passed by the U.S. Congress in 1882 in response to nativist demands; it prevented the large scale immigration of Chinese workers into the U.S.

After the discovery of gold in California in 1848, workers were scarce, and the immigration of Chinese laborers was welcomed. The Burlingame Treaty of 1868 between the U.S. and China the immigration of tens of thousands of Chinese men; very few women came. But the completion of the transcontinental railways brought more white laborers to the West, and they strenuously complained of "Oriental" competition, involving "coolies" trapped into indentured labor (a form of semi-slavery), unskilled workers paid very low wages and a population impossible to assimilate into American society or political culture. Other complaints centered on the tongs that controlled every aspect of Chinese life in America,, and the opium dens.

In 1877, when 9% of the state's population was Chinese, the agitation for exclusion was led by Denis Kearney, Irish-born leader of the Workingmen's party. In 1877 a committee of the U.S. Senate reported in favor of modification of the Burlingame Treaty, and in 1879 Congress passed the "Fifteen Passenger Act," restricting Chinese immigration; however it was vetoed by President Rutherford B. Hayes as a violation of the treaty. In November 1880, a commission headed by James B. Angell signed a treaty with China permitting restrictions upon the immigration of laborers but exempting teachers, students, merchants, and travelers. This was followed by the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, which suspended Chinese immigration for ten years. The Scott Act of 1888 and the Geary Act of 1892 contained flagrant violations of the treaty of 1880, partly induced by the failure of China to ratify the Bayard Treaty of 1888, sanctioning a prohibition of immigration of laborers for twenty years. A new treaty with China, in 1894, permitted for ten years the absolute prohibition of the entrance of Chinese laborers into the United States. The act of 1902 enforced this severe prohibition.

Violence throughout the west in the 1870s forced the Chinese into a small number of cities, where they formed exclusive districts called Chinatowns, that were virtually self-governing. Since very few women were involved, the immigrant population--which had arrived as young men in the 1860s--gradually aged and died out.

Although Congress ruled that no Asian immigrant could become a naturalized citizen, the Supreme Court ruled that every person born in the U.S. is automatically a citizen and entitled to leave and re-enter the country at will. To replenish the Chinatown population Chinese merchants brought in thousands of Chinese "paper sons" on fraudulent certificates that said they were born in America. Immigration officials knew that most were fakes and questioned the applicants closely, but they had been thoroughly rehearsed and had prepared false genealogies and even village maps and local details that stymied the immigration examiners. Smuggling rings brought in additional thousands across the Canadian and Mexican borders.

In 1904 the Chinese government refused to renew the treaty of 1894, while harsh enforcement of the immigration laws in the United States led in 1905 to a boycott of American goods in China. Nevertheless, the laws excluding Chinese laborers remained on the statute book. Chinese resentment of this treatment was more than offset by the goodwill resulting from American friendly relations in the events following the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 and the establishment of the republic in 1911, and diplomatic friction over the exclusion policy soon disappeared. The laws were repealed in 1943, during World War II, as the U.S. and China were allies fighting the Japanese. All the national and racial exclusions were ended with a new immigration law in 1965, that favored applicants with high skills. Most of the Chinese Americans today are post-1965 arrivals and their children.

Bibliography

• Ahmad, Diana L. The Opium Debate And Chinese Exclusion Laws In The Nineteenth-Century American West (2007)
• Calavita, Kitty. "The Paradoxes of Race, Class, Identity, and 'Passing': Enforcing the Chinese Exclusion Acts, 1882–1910," Law and Social Inquiry 25 (Winter 2000):1–40
• Chan, Sucheng, ed. Entry Denied: Exclusion and the Chinese Community in America, 1882-1943. (1991). 286 pp.
• Chen, Yong. Chinese San Francisco, 1850–1943: A Trans-Pacific Community (2000).
• Ettinger, Patrick. "'We Sometimes Wonder What They Will Spring on Us Next': Immigrants and Border Enforcement in the American West, 1882-1930." Western Historical Quarterly 2006 37(2): 159-181. Issn: 0043-3810 Fulltext: History Cooperative
• Griffith, Sarah M. "Border Crossings: Race, Class, and Smuggling in Pacific Coast Chinese Immigrant Society." Western Historical Quarterly 2004 35(4): 473-492. Issn: 0043-3810 Fulltext: History Cooperative
• Gyory, Andrew. Closing the Gate: Race, Politics, and the Chinese Exclusion Act (1998), blames eastern politicians, not Californians, for passage excerpt and text search
• Jung, Moon-ho. "Outlawing 'Coolies': Race, Nation, and Empire in the Age of Emancipation." American Quarterly 2005 57(3): 677-701. Issn: 0003-0678 Fulltext: Project Muse
• Lau, Estelle. Paper Families: Identity, Immigration Administration, and Chinese Exclusion (2006) excerpt and text search
• Lee, Erika. "Enforcing the Borders: Chinese Exclusion along the U.S. Borders with Canada and Mexico, 1882–1924," Journal of American History 89 (June 2002): 54–86. in JSTOR
• Lee, Erika. At America's Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882-1943 (2003) excerpt and text search
• Miller, Stuart Creighton. The Unwelcome Immigrant: The American Image of the Chinese, 1785–1882 (1969)
• Naruta, Anna Noel. "Creating Whiteness in California: Racialization Processes, Land, and Policy in the Context of California's Chinese Exclusion Movements, 1850 to 1910." PhD dissertation U. of California, Berkeley 2006. 300 pp. DAI 2007 67(8): 3038-9. 3228437 Fulltext: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• Peffer, George Anthony. If They Don't Bring Their Women Here: Chinese Female Immigration before Exclusion (1999) excerpt and text search

Primary sources

• Yung, Judy, et al ads. Chinese American Voices: From the Gold Rush to the Present (2006) excerpt and text search