The Chinese Exclusion Act

(noun)

A U.S. law prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers.

Related Terms

Examples of The Chinese Exclusion Act in the following topics:

  • Chinese Exclusion and Chinese Rights

    • The Chinese Exclusion Act was an 1882 federal law suspending Chinese immigration to the US, incited by increasing anti-Chinese sentiment.
    • The Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States federal law signed by Chester A.
    • The Chinese Exclusion Act was one of the most significant restrictions on free immigration in U.S. history.
    • The Scott Act (1888) expanded upon the Chinese Exclusion Act, prohibiting reentry after leaving the U.S.
    • The IWW openly opposed the Chinese Exclusion Act from its inception in 1905.

  • The Sand-Lot Incident

    • The party took particular aim against Chinese immigrant labor and the Central Pacific Railroad , which employed them.
    • Its famous slogan was "The Chinese must go!
    • This sentiment led eventually to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
    • Corresponding with the English author and politician James Bryce in the late 1880s, Kearney nonetheless claimed credit for making the "Chinese Question" a national issue and affecting the legislation of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882.
    • In one of his early speeches, he urged laborers to be "thrifty and industrious like the Chinese", but within a year's time he began denouncing Chinese immigrants as the cause of white workers' economic woes.

  • The Nativist Response to Immigration

    • Nativist movements included the Know-Nothing or American Party of the 1850s, the Immigration Restriction League of the 1890s, and the anti-Asian movements in the West, the latter of which resulted in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
    • The Chinese Exclusion Act was a U.S. federal law signed by Chester A.
    • The Chinese Exclusion Act was one of the most significant restrictions on free immigration in U.S. history.
    • 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.
    • This sentiment led eventually to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

  • The Pull to America

    • After intense anti-Chinese agitation in California and the West, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882.
    • In 1875, the nation passed its first immigration law, the Page Act of 1875, also known as the "Asian Exclusion Act."
    • In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act.
    • The act stated that there was a limited amount of immigrants of Chinese descent allowed into the United States.
    • The Immigration Act of 1891 established a commissioner of immigration in the Department of the Treasury.

  • Social Trends

    • Industrialization resulted in the urbanization of America, with immigration fueling the growth.
    • Many Chinese had been brought to the West Coast to construct railroads, but unlike European immigrants, they were seen as being part of an entirely alien culture.
    • After intense anti-Chinese agitation in California and the west, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882.
    • The Third Great Awakening was a period of renewal in evangelical Protestantism from the late 1850s to the 1900s.
    • At the same time, the Catholic Church grew rapidly, with a base in the German, Irish, Polish, and Italian immigrant communities, and a leadership drawn from the Irish.

  • Progressivism for Whites Only

    • In 1901, the AFL lobbied Congress to reauthorize the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act.
    • The Chinese Exclusion Act was a federal law signed by Chester A.
    • Arthur allowing the U.S. to suspend Chinese immigration, a ban that was intended to last 10 years.
    • As a result, the AFL intensified its opposition to all immigration from Asia and was instrumental in passing and enforcing immigration restriction bills from the 1890s to the 1920s, such as the 1921 Emergency Quota Act and the Immigration Act of 1924.
    • Editorial cartoon showing a Chinese man being excluded from entry to the "Golden Gate of Liberty."

  • Civil Rights of Asian Americans

    • Chinese men made up the majority of certain industrial labor pools, most notably the western railroad industry, by the end of the century.
    • The Page Act was followed by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which suspended all Chinese immigration for ten years, and the Geary Act of 1892, which provided Chinese immigrants to carry resident papers and prevented them from full access to U.S. legal proceedings.
    • A xenophobic stance known as the Yellow Peril is often associated with early 20th century attempts to limit Chinese immigration and to bar Chinese residents from gaining American citizenship.
    • Johnson signed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.
    • A demographic shift followed the passage of the act, and the Asian American population became increasingly well-educated and had growing access to material resources in the United States.

  • Nativism

    • Nativist movements included the Know Nothing or American Party of the 1850s, the Immigration Restriction League of the 1890s, the anti-Asian movements in the West, resulting in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the "Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907," by which Japan's government stopped emigration to the U.S.
    • Labor unions were strong supporters of Chinese exclusion and limits on immigration because of fears that they would lower wages and make it harder to organize unions.
    • After intense lobbying from the nativist movement, the United States Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act in 1921.
    • The Emergency Quota Act was followed with the Immigration Act of 1924, a more permanent resolution.
    • This law reduced the number of immigrants able to arrive from 357,803, the number established in the Emergency Quota Act, to 164,687.

  • The Knights of Labor and the "Conditions Essential to Liberty"

    • The Knights of Labor was the largest and one of the most important American labor organizations of the 1880s.
    • In some cases, it acted as a labor union, negotiating with employers, but it was never well organized.
    • Asians were also excluded, and in November 1885, a branch of the Knights in Tacoma, Washington worked to expel the city's Chinese, who amounted to nearly a tenth of the overall city population at the time.
    • The Knights were also responsible for race riots that resulted in the deaths of about 28 Chinese Americans in the Rock Springs massacre in Wyoming, and an estimated 50 African-American sugar-cane laborers in the 1887 Thibodaux massacre in Louisiana.
    • The Knights strongly supported the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Contract Labor Law of 1885, as did many other labor groups, although the group did accept most others, including skilled and unskilled women of any profession.

  • Race and Ethnicity in the U.S.

    • The brutal confrontation between the European colonists and the Native Americans, which resulted in the decimation of the latter's population, is well known as an historical tragedy.
    • The major blow to America's formally institutionalized racism was the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
    • This Act, which is still followed today, banned discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
    • Asian Americans come from a diversity of cultures, including Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese.
    • The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, for example, which was motivated by white workers blaming Chinese migrants for taking their jobs, resulted in the abrupt end of Chinese immigration and the segregation of Chinese already in America; this segregation resulted in the Chinatowns found in large cities.