Chinese Exclusion Act

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This article is about the former U.S. law. For the similar Canadian law, see Chinese Immigration Act of 1923.
Not to be confused with Asian Exclusion Act.
Chinese Exclusion Act
Great Seal of the United States
Legislative history
The first page of the Chinese Exclusion Act



Chinese immigrant workers building the Transcontinental Railroad.

The first significant Chinese immigration to North 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 wage labor such as restaurant and laundry work.[citation needed] 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.[citation needed]

In the early 1850s, there was resistance to the idea of excluding Chinese migrant workers from immigration, because they provided essential tax revenue which helped fill the fiscal gap of California.[3] But toward the end of the decade, the financial situation improved and subsequently, attempts to legislate Chinese exclusion became successful on the state level.[3] In 1858, the California Legislature passed a law that made it illegal for any person "of the Chinese or Mongolian races" to enter the state; however, this law was struck down by an unpublished opinion of the State Supreme Court in 1862.[4] The Chinese immigrant workers provided cheap labor and did not use any of the government infrastructure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 in cities such as Los Angeles. By 1878 Congress decided to act and passed legislation excluding the Chinese, but this was vetoed by President Rutherford B. Hayes. In 1879, California adopted a new Constitution, which explicitly authorized the state government to determine which individuals were allowed to reside in the state, and banned the Chinese from employment by corporations and state, county or municipal governments.[5] Once the Chinese Exclusion Act was finally passed in 1882, California went further by passing various laws that were later held to be unconstitutional.[6] 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.[7] Although there was widespread dislike for the Chinese, some capitalists and entrepreneurs resisted their exclusion because they accepted lower wages.[8]

The Act[edit]

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 earlier Page Act of 1875 had prohibited immigration of Asian forced laborers and prostitutes, and the Naturalization Act of 1790 prohibited naturalization of non-white subjects.) The Act excluded Chinese "skilled and unskilled laborers and Chinese employed in mining" from entering the country for ten years under penalty of imprisonment and deportation.[9][10]

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, which tended to be difficult to prove[10] 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 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.[9][10] 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.[9]


Between 1882 and 1905, about 10,000 Chinese appealed against negative immigration decisions to federal court, usually via a petition for habeas corpus.[11] In most of these cases, the courts ruled in favor of the petitioner.[11] 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. All these developments, along with the extension of the act in 1902, triggered a boycott of U.S. goods in China between 1904 and 1906 that by some estimates cut U.S. exports to China by more than half.[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.[15] 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.[16]




Later, the Immigration Act of 1924 restricted immigration even further, excluding all classes of Chinese immigrants and extending restrictions to other Asian immigrant groups.[9] 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).[9]



Repeal and current status[edit]

The Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed by the 1943 Magnuson Act, during a time when China had become an ally of the U.S. against Japan in World War II. The Magnuson Act 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 prohibiting Chinese people from marrying whites was not repealed until 1948.[20][21] Other states had such laws until 1967,[22] 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."[23] 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.[24] The resolution had been approved by the U.S. Senate in October 2011.[25]

See also[edit]


  2. ^ Kearney, Denis (28 February 1878), Appeal from California. The Chinese Invasion. Workingmen’s Address, Indianapolis Times, retrieved 5 May 2014 
  3. ^ a b c Kanazawa, Mark. "Immigration, Exclusion, and Taxation: Anti-Chinese Legislation in Gold Rush California". The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Sep., 2005), pp. 779-805. Published by: Cambridge poopies University Press on behalf of the Economic History Association.
  4. ^ "Text of the Chinese Exclusion Act" (PDF). University of California, Hastings College of the Law. Retrieved 2014-05-05. 
  5. ^ "Constitution of the State of California, 1879". 
  6. ^ 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
  7. ^ 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
  8. ^ 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
  10. ^ a b c d e "The People's Vote: Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)". U.S. News & World Reports. Archived from the original on 28 March 2007. Retrieved 5 May 2014. 
  11. ^ a b Daniel, Roger, "Book Review"
  13. ^ Roger Daniels, Coming to America, p271.
  16. ^ Choi, Jennifer Jung Hee. The Rhetoric of Inclusion: The I.W.W. and Asian Workers
  18. ^ Alan Brinkley's American History: A Survey, 12th Edition
  19. ^ E. Denza, Commentary to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, Third Ed. Oxford University Press 2008, p. 51
  20. ^ Chin, Gabriel; Karthikeyan, Hrishi (2002). "Preserving Racial Identity: Population Patterns and the Application of Anti-Miscegenation Statutes to Asian Americans, 1910-1950". Asian Law Journal (Social Science Research Network) 9. Retrieved 5 May 2014. 
  22. ^ Anti-miscegenation laws in the United States
  25. ^ "US apologizes for Chinese Exclusion Act" China Daily, 19 June 2012

Further reading[edit]

External links[edit]