Gale Research - DISCovering U.S. History

Chinese Exclusion Act and First Immigration Law Passed, May, 1882 - August, 1882

Legislation aimed at restricting immigration

Principal personages:

CHESTER ALAN ARTHUR (1830-1886), twenty-first President of the United States 1881-1885
DENIS KEARNEY (1847-1907), leader of the Workingmen's Party in California and an inveterate foe of Chinese immigration
JAMES T. FARLEY (fl. 1882)
JOHN F. MILLER (fl. 1882) Senators from California active in the exclusion movement
HENRY L. DAWES (1816-1903), Senator from Massachusetts, opponent of exclusion
JOSEPH R. HAWLEY (1826-1905), Senator from Connecticut, opponent of exclusion

Summary of Event

In 1886, Americans dedicated the Statue of Liberty, a monument which stands in symbolic welcome to the "huddled masses" from foreign shores. Yet even as the statue was dedicated, Americans had allowed the vision of their country as a refuge for all men to grow dimmer instead of brighter. Four years earlier, in 1882, the United States had taken the first steps to exclude immigrants from China and to restrict certain classes of immigrants from all foreign countries.

Sporadically during the middle and late nineteenth century, antiforeign sentiment had flared against Germans, Irish, Catholics, and others. Nativism had manifested itself in politics but had never blatantly displayed itself in restrictive immigration laws except in the case of Afro-Americans. After the Civil War, the so-called "new immigration" the large influx of peoples from areas other than Northern and Western Europe eventually triggered a new nativist response.

The beginning of this nativist response occurred in California and was directed against the Chinese. Recent research has documented the fact that Americans in general resented the Chinese on the basis of a large collection of racial and cultural phobias. In the late 1860's, an upsurge of Oriental immigration coincided with the beginning of a period of economic recession and unemployment. In California, where almost all Chinese immigrants to the United States settled, workingmen took the lead in calling for an end to Chinese immigration. Chinese immigrants were the largest non-European group in California. Their numbers and customs, many Californians believed, constituted a threat to basic "American" institutions. Their houses and shops were believed to be opium dens in which innocent native Californians were debauched. The Chinese were thought to be a race of "coolies" who threatened the wages and dignity of native California labor. In San Francisco, "anti-coolie clubs" and "light hour leagues" organized anti-Chinese demonstrations. From Chico to San Diego, the Chinese were frequent victims of mob violence throughout the 1870's. In Los Angeles, a mob of about five hundred assaulted the city's Chinatown and killed a score of its residents. Under the leadership of Denis Kearney, a naturalized Irishman, the Workingmen's Party of California became a potent anti-Chinese force in state politics and in racial riots and demonstrations.

Californians translated their nativism into politics at the national level by demanding a law that would prohibit Chinese immigration. Party politics gave added weight to the Californians' demands as, on the national level, both Republicans and Democrats vied for Western constituencies which they believed to be crucial. In 1879, Congress responded to Western pressure and passed a Chinese Exclusion Bill. However, President Rutherford B. Hayes vetoed the measure because it violated the terms of the Burlingame Treaty of 1868, which permitted unlimited Chinese immigration to the U.S. In 1880, the United States and China revised the treaty to include the possibility of unilateral exclusion. Accordingly, in 1882 Congress again passed an exclusion bill, prohibiting the immigration of Chinese laborers for a period of twenty years. President Chester A. Arthur vetoed this bill because it was not in keeping with the spirit of the 1880 negotiations with China. Congress immediately drafted another bill. Finally in May, 1882, President Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act. This law suspended immigration and naturalization of Chinese laborers, skilled and unskilled, for ten years. The Exclusion Act was renewed for another ten year period in 1892, and in 1902, Chinese exclusion was made permanent.

Having passed the nation's first Chinese exclusion measure in 1882, the U.S. Congress then took steps to restrict the immigration of certain classes of all aliens when, in the same year, it passed a bill which imposed a tax of fifty cents on every entering immigrant and prohibited the entry of convicts, idiots, lunatics, and those likely to become a public charge.

By 1882, the United States had excluded one nationality and had imposed limitations, however slight, on all potential immigrants. The Chinese question in California had been an explosive one. The restrictive features of the immigration act seemed necessary and indeed were an improvement over chaotic state supervision of immigration. Because of technical questions, Presidents Hayes and Arthur had vetoed exclusion measures even though they personally favored Chinese exclusion, but Congress had repeatedly passed exclusion legislation. In one section of the country, exclusion was an issue of paramount political magnitude, and elsewhere Americans believed the Chinese to be somehow outside the asylum tradition. By prohibiting immigration of Chinese and those likely to become public charges, Congress had turned away "huddled masses," even before Emma Lazarus' poetry on the Statue of Liberty had bidden them welcome.

Picture Gallery

Chinese Railroad Laborers
Between 10,000 and 12,000 Chinese laborers, employed by the Central Pacific Railroad, carved tunnels and laid track across the Sierra Nevada.

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Angel Island Immigration Station, San Francisco

Angel Island was a detention center for non-laboring Asian immigrants from 1910 to 1940. Experiencing long waiting periods under inhumane conditions, many immigrants committed suicide.

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See also: Text of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882