The United States immediately following the Civil War was still very open to immigration, and had not attempted to regulate it until this point.

"Immigration to the United States was free and encouraged. Indeed as late as 1868, Congress declared it was a natural right of human beings to expatriate themselves, and the United States affirmed the rights of all to seek a new home. By 1875, however, unemployment, economic depression, and growing 'nativism,' racism, and xenophobia led to the promulgation of the first national immigration act and then to a series of Chinese exclusion acts..." (1)

Once mining had proven less profitable than west-bound immigrants had hoped, booming new states such as California found their unemployment rates skyrocketing. Californians identified an ethnic group whom they found responsible for their problems: the Chinese. The Chinese worked at the most menial jobs for the least possible wages. Americans felt that wages were being suppressed by the Chinese, and pushed for federal legislation to remedy the problem. Proponents of exclusion "...argued that it was nothing less than the duty and the sovereign right of Californians and Americans to do so for the good of the country." Lawyers called the Chinese "...the half-civilized subject from Asia..." The United States Supreme Court called the Chinese "...as 'vast hordes of people crowding in upon us' and as 'a different race... dangerous to [America's] peace and security.' The nation's highest court thus affirmed the right of the federal government to exclude Chinese..."(2) The first Chinese Exclusion Act was approved by the United States Senate in 1880. There has been a vast amount of legislation in its wake. "The legal crystallization of the anti-Chinese movement in the Chinese Exclusion Acts has had profound effects on subsequent U.S. immigration policies and their part in the racialization of immigrants." (3)

Chinese Exclusion introduced to the United States immigration process the concept of racial, ethnic, and class exclusion. Specifically Chinese laborer's were not permitted to immigrate into the United States. Meanwhile teacher's, professionals, and merchants were allowed. "Immigrant laborers who were considered a threat to American white working men were summarily excluded on the basis of class. General restriction laws- especially those targeting immigrants suspected of immoral behavior or 'likely to become public charges'- affect female immigrants disproportionately. Immigration disease and sexuality was monitored, contained, and excluded through immigration policy as well."(3) Women are soon banned from immigrating at all.


The Chinese Exclusion Act had serious effects on the ethnic Chinese populations of the United States. One surprising result was an increase in crime in their community. The prohibition against bringing their women into the country led to a disproportionate number of single Chinese men.

“The significance of this could be seen in the prevalence of vices such as gambling and prostitution in Chinatowns, in the high dependency of individual migrants on the support of surname, native place, and fraternal organizations, and in feelings of isolation and impermanence. Moreover, these phenomena have all been used as fodder for racists and exclusionary condemnations of Chinese as immoral, unassimilable, able to tolerate substandard wages and living conditions, and as temporary sojourners siphoning off the wealth of the nation.”(2)

Newspaper articles from the period talked about "the evils flowing from the Chinese among us..." and these "evils" are those commonly found in a male dominated world far from home, such as the "vices" mentioned above. (3) These same "evils" would have been dominate in any mining or trapping community in the newly settled West. Commonly as found in American settlements, many of the few women who did migrate to the West were prostitutes, catering to gender imbalance. The same generality applied to the few Chinese women who arrived. In 1860, 24 percent of the 654 Chinese women counted by the United States census in San Francisco were listed as prostitutes. This proportion reached a zenith of 71 percent of the 2,018 women in 1870..." (4) These statistics indicate that the white citizens of San Francisco were reacting to what appears to be a legitimate problem in their community: Chinese women were catering to the demands of the American population to provide sexual services. In a simple equation of supply and demand, male Chinese laborers were supply cut-rate labor to a demanding market, and Chinese women were supplying their bodies into a equally demanding market.

With the Chinese Exclusion legislation came an institutionalized method of discriminating against who in this world Americans were willing to share this country with. Immigrants could be rejected by race, by class, and by sex. The next installment in this series will talk in depth about the long term affects this legislation had on the United States, including the current state of immigration.

(1) Louis Henkin, "The Constitution and United States Sovereignty: A Century of 'Chinese Exclusion' and Its Progeny," Harvard Law Review. Vol 100, No. 4 (Feb., 1987), p. 856.

(2) & (3) Erika Lee, "The Chinese Exclusion Example: Race, Immigration, and American Gatekeeping, 1882-1924," Journal of American Ethnic History. Vol. 21, No. 3 (Spring, 2002), p. 38-39.

(4) Erin L. Murphy, "Prelude to Imperialism: Whiteness and Chinese Exclusion in the Reimagining of the United States," Journal of Historical Sociology. Vol 18, Issue 6 (2005). p. 457.

(5) Adam Mckeown, "Transnational Chinese Families and Chinese Exclusion, 1875-1943," Journal of American Ethnic History. Vol. 18, No. 2 (Winter 1999), p.73.

(6) Daily Evening Bulletin, San Francisco, January 07, 1880, page 4. http://infoweb.newsbank.com

(7) Adam Mckeown, "Transnational Chinese Families and Chinese Exclusion, 1875-1943," Journal of American Ethnic History. Vol. 18, No. 2 (Winter 1999), p. 79.