Chinese Exclusion Act
1
Chinese Exclusion Act
The Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States federal law signed by Chester
A. Arthur on May 6, 1882, following revisions made in 1880 to the Burlingame
Treaty of 1868. Those revisions allowed the U.S. to suspend Chinese
immigration, a ban that was intended to last 10 years. This law was repealed by
the Magnuson Act on December 17, 1943.
The first page of the Chinese
Exclusion Act.
Background
The first significant Chinese immigration to America
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
Chinese immigrant workers building the Transcontinental Railroad.
wage labor such as restaurant and laundry work. 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.
Chinese Gold Rush in California
Early on, the California government did not wish to exclude Chinese migrant workers from immigration because
they provided essential tax revenue which helped fill the fiscal gap of California. 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
Chinese Exclusion Act
2
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. Once the Chinese Exclusion Act was finally passed in 1882, California went further
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]
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 employed in mining" from entering the country
for ten years under penalty of imprisonment and deportation. Many
Chinese were relentlessly beaten just because of their race.[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]
The first page of a twenty one page interrogation
transcript of Yee Bing Quai. He is interrogated by
Inspector Charles E Golding with clerk Marion T
Lovett recording and David Lee interpreting,
June 15, 1938, in Boston, MA.
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]
Chinese Exclusion Act
3
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, a
labor union, who supported it because it believed that industrialists were using Chinese workers as a wedge to keep
wages low.[13] 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]
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."
For all practical purposes, the Exclusion Act, along with the
restrictions that followed it, froze the Chinese community in place in
1882. 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 restricted 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 (Chinatown).[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.
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.
Repeal and current status
In 1891 the Government of China refused to accept the U.S. senator
Mr. Henry W. Blair as U.S. Minister to China due to his abusive
remarks regarding China during negotiation of the Chinese Exclusion
Act.[17]
Chinese Exclusion Act
The Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed by the 1943 Magnuson Act, which permitted Chinese nationals already
residing in the country to become naturalized citizens and stop hiding from the threat of deportation. It also allowed
a national quota of 105 Chinese immigrants per year. Large scale Chinese immigration did not occur until the
passage of the Immigration and Nationality 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.[18][19] Other
states had such laws until 1967,[20] when the United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Loving v. Virginia
that anti-miscegenation laws are unconstitutional.
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."[21] 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.
On June 18, 2012, the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution introduced by Congresswoman
Judy Chu, that formally expresses the regret of the House of Representatives for the Chinese Exclusion Act, which
imposed almost total restrictions on Chinese immigration and naturalization and denied Chinese-Americans basic
freedoms because of their ethnicity. This was only the fourth time that the U.S. Congress issued an apology to a
group of people.[22] In the spring of 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed by Congress and signed by
President Chester A. Arthur. This act provided an absolute 10-year moratorium on Chinese labor immigration. For
the first time, Federal law proscribed entry of an ethnic working group on the premise that it endangered the good
order of certain localities.
The Chinese Exclusion Act required the few nonlaborers who sought entry to obtain certification from the Chinese
government that they were qualified to immigrate. But this group found it increasingly difficult to prove that they
were not laborers because the 1882 act defined excludables as “skilled and unskilled laborers and Chinese employed
in mining.” Thus very few Chinese could enter the country under the 1882 law.
The 1882 exclusion act also placed new requirements on Chinese who had already entered the country. If they left
the United States, they had to obtain certifications to re-enter. Congress, moreover, refused State and Federal courts
the right to grant citizenship to Chinese resident aliens, although these courts could still deport them.
When the exclusion act expired in 1892, Congress extended it for 10 years in the form of the Geary Act. This
extension, made permanent in 1902, added restrictions by requiring each Chinese resident to register and obtain a
certificate of residence. Without a certificate, she or he faced deportation.
The Geary Act regulated Chinese immigration until the 1920s. With increased postwar immigration, Congress
adopted new means for regulation: quotas and requirements pertaining to national origin. By this time, anti-Chinese
agitation had quieted. In 1943 Congress repealed all the exclusion acts, leaving a yearly limit of 105 Chinese and
gave foreign-born Chinese the right to seek naturalization. The so-called national origin system, with various
modifications, lasted until Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1965. Effective July 1, 1968, a limit of 170,000
immigrants from outside the Western Hemisphere could enter the United States, with a maximum of 20,000 from
any one country. Skill and the need for political asylum determined admission. The Immigration Act of 1990
provided the most comprehensive change in legal immigration since 1965. The act established a “flexible” worldwide
cap on family-based, employment-based, and diversity immigrant visas. The act further provides that visas for any
single foreign state in these categories may not exceed 7 percent of the total available.
4
Chinese Exclusion Act
References
[1] Norton, Henry K. (1924). The Story of California From the Earliest Days to the Present (http:/ / www. sfmuseum. net/ hist6/ chinhate. html).
Chicago: A.C. McClurg & Co.. pp. 283–296. .
[2] See, e.g., http:/ / historymatters. gmu. edu/ d/ 5046/ %7C
[3] Kanazawa, Mark. "Immigration, Exclusion, and Taxation: Anti-Chinese Legislation Gold Rush in California". The Journal of Economic
History, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Sep., 2005), pp. 779-805. Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Economic History Association.
[4] Cole, L. Cheryl."Chinese Exclusion: The Capitalist Perspective of the Sacramento Union, 1850-1882".California History, Vol. 57, No. 1, The
Chinese in California (Spring, 1978), pp. 8-31. Published by: California Historical Society
[5] Chew, Kenneth and Liu, John. "Hidden in Plain Sight: Global Labor Force Exchange in the Chinese American Population, 1880-1940".
Population and Development Review, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Mar., 2004), pp. 57-78.Published by: Population Council
[6] Miller, Joaquin. "The Chinese and the Exclusion Act". The North American Review, Vol. 173, No. 541 (Dec., 1901), pp. 782-789. Published
by: University of Northern Iowa
[7] "Exclusion" (http:/ / memory. loc. gov/ learn/ / features/ immig/ chinese6. html). Library of Congress. 2003-09-01. . Retrieved 2010-01-25.
[8] usnews.com: The People's Vote: Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) (http:/ / www. usnews. com/ usnews/ documents/ docpages/
document_page47. htm)
[9] Leti Volpp "Divesting Citizenship: On Asian American History and the Loss of Citizenship Through Marriage" The Regents of the
University of California. UCLA Law Review (2005).
[10] Daniel, Roger, " Book Review (http:/ / www. historycooperative. org/ journals/ lhr/ 17. 1/ br_11. html)"
[11] Roger Daniels, Coming to America, p271.
[12] Chin, Gabriel J., (1998) [[University of California, Los Angeles|UCLA (http:/ / papers. ssrn. com/ sol3/ papers.
cfm?abstract_id=1121119)] Law Review vol. 46, at 1 "Segregation's Last Stronghold: Race Discrimination and the Constitutional Law
of Immigration"]
[13] Kennedy, David M. Cohen, Lizabeth, Bailey, Thomas A. The American Pageant. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002
[14] Choi, Jennifer Jung Hee. The Rhetoric of Inclusion: The I.W.W. and Asian Workers
[15] Zhang, Sheldon (2007). Smuggling and trafficking in human beings: all roads lead to America. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 69.
ISBN 978-0-275-98951-4.
[16] Alan Brinkley's American History: A Survey, 12th Edition
[17] E. Denza, Commentary to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, Third Ed. Oxford University Press 2008, p. 51
[18] Chin, Gabriel; Karthikeyan, Hrishi (2002). Asian Law Journal vol. 9 "Preserving Racial Identity: Population Patterns and the Application of
Anti-Miscegenation Statutes to Asian Americans, 1910-1950" (http:/ / papers. ssrn. com/ sol3/ papers. cfm?abstract_id=283998)
[19] See Perez v. Sharp, 32 Cal. 2d 711 (http:/ / online. ceb. com/ CalCases/ C2/ 32C2d711. htm) (1948).
[20] Anti-miscegenation laws in the United States
[21] US CODE-TITLE 8-ALIENS AND NATIONALITY (http:/ / caselaw. lp. findlaw. com/ casecode/ uscodes/ 8/ chapters/ 7/ toc. html)
[22] 112th Congress (2012) (June 8, 2012). "H.Res. 683 (112th)" (http:/ / www. govtrack. us/ congress/ bills/ 112/ hres683). Legislation.
GovTrack.us. . Retrieved August 9, 2012. "Expressing the regret of the House of Representatives for the passage of laws that adversely
affected the Chinese in the United States, including the Chinese Exclusion Act."
• Bodenner, Chris. "Chinese Exclusion Act." Issues & Controversies in American History @ FACTS.com. 20 Oct.
2006. Facts On File News Services. 3 Nov. 2007 <http://www.2facts.com>.
External links
• Chinese Exclusion Act (http://sun.menloschool.org/~mbrody/ushistory/angel/exclusion_act/)
• Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) (http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=47) - Our
Documents
• Exclusion Act Case Files of Yee Wee Thing and Yee Bing Quai, two "Paper Sons" (http://www.paperson.com/
history.htm)
• The Yung Wing Project (http://www.ywproject.com) hosts the memoir of one of the earliest naturalized
Chinese whose citizenship was revoked forty-six years after having received it as a result of the Chinese
Exclusion Act.
• An Alleged Wife (http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2004/spring/alleged-wife-1.html) One
Immigrant in the Chinese Exclusion Era
• Collection of primary source documents relating to the Chinese Exclusion Act, from Harvard University. (http://
ocp.hul.harvard.edu/immigration/themes-exclusion.html)
5
Chinese Exclusion Act
• Primary source documents and images from the University of California (http://www.calisphere.
universityofcalifornia.edu/themed_collections/subtopic2a.html)
• The Rocky Road to Liberty: A Documented History of Chinese American Immigration and Exclusion (http://
ca-soc.org/wpmu284a/documents/)
• (http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2012-06/19/content_15512469.htm)
6
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