CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT (1882-1943)
Chinese Segregation
The United States government not only displayed racial inequality towards African Americans but also against Chinese immigrants in the mid 1850s. On May 6, 1882, President Chester A. Arthur passed the Chinese Exclusion Act which was the first significant law restricting immigration into the United States [1]. It began when Chinese immigrants migrated to the west of the United States after the Gold Rush of 1849. The West Coast was a center of economic opportunity in the 1850s. First, they worked in the gold mines then eventually in agriculture then factory work like in the garment industry. Chinese labor grew successfully as they became a primary source for building the first transcontinental railroad by working on the Central Pacific from 1864 to 1869.
Chinese Mistreatment A sense of an anti-Chinese sentiment grew strong, especially on the West Coast, as native-born Americans became more unemployed with declining wages and Chinese labor increased. As a result there was a law that was designed to limit any future immigration of Chinese workers to the United States and prohibited them from becoming United States citizens. This resulted in a possible sour diplomatic relations between the United States and China. This was ironic because of how many Chinese immigrants were actually helping Americans build the Transcontinental Railroad. Most Chinese laborers who came to the United States did so in order to send money back to China to support their families there. At the same time, they also had to repay loans to the Chinese merchants who paid their passage to America. Chinese immigrants only consisted of .002% of the nation's population and Congress still passed the law in order to keep "racial purity [2]." The law was in affect for twenty years (the Geary Act extended the Exclusion Act for another 10 years) and did not allow for Chinese to obtain naturalization in the United States. The law soon became permanent in 1902 requiring each Chinese resident to register and obtain a certificate of residence. Without a certificate, she or he faced deportation.
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Immigration Visa
This is the Immigration Visa of Ng Shee that was used to authenticate her identify. The visa is part of a series of documents in the National Archives at Boston that are used to identify Chinese immigrants trying to enter America. She had requested to leave Hong Kong, China, to join her Chinese American husband who was living in Waltham, MA. The documents included a Nonquota Immigration Visa, her husband's petition requesting that she be allowed to enter the United States, and the map that Ng Shee drew of her village under interrogation by the immigration officials with a Chinese interpreter, and the interrogation questions. Her documents were one of approximately 25,000 files in the National Archives at Boston pertaining to Chinese exclusion. The purpose of the documents was to ensure that people seeking to immigrate to the United States keep to the immigration regulations [5].
Used But Not WantedIt was ironic how the United States government was pleased with the Chinese labor but did not want to give them citizenship or let The United States government did not treat Chinese immigrants as equal even though the nation was based on equality, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..." If the Chinese merchants did not boycott against American immigration into China then President Theodore Roosevelt would not have noticed their unfair treatment towards the Chinese nation. President Roosevelt would not have seen the much needed alliance he needed with China for World War II. The exclusion may have started with the American people building an anti-Chinese sentiment against Chinese immigrants but the government has the final say on what is the law.
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