When gold was discovered in California in 1848, flocks of immigrants from China, Australia, and many other countries came to America seeking instant wealth. After a year of crop failure in 1852, 20,000 Chinese immigrated through San Francisco in search of work. Many Chinese immigrants became laborers, miners, and railroad builders for the Transcontinental Railroad.
However, violence soon erupted between white miners and Chinese miners due to racism. Taxes were imposed on Chinese workers to unfairly target them. By 1870, Chinese workers owed $5 million dollars in taxes to the California government that white laborers didn’t have to pay. Much like the discrimination faced by black and Native American citizens, Chinese were barred from testifying in courts which made it impossible for Chinese citizens to seek justice for the hate crimes that were committed against them.
In 1882, the United States Federal Government passed the Chinese Exclusion Act with the purpose to curb Chinese immigration in order to maintain white “racial purity” despite the fact that Chinese immigrants only composed 0.002% of the population.
The Chinese Exclusion Act was the first law ever in American history to target and prevent all members of a specific ethnic group from entering the nation. For Chinese-Americans who already established lives on American soil, the law meant that they were ineligible citizenship. Unfortunately, this act also encouraged other laws that discouraged or barred immigrants from non-white nations like countries in the Middle East, India, and Japan.
It wasn’t until 1943 did Chinese Americans become eligible for citizenship -- 75 years after the passing of the 14th Amendment.
This is a very intriguing post since this correlated with the racism undergone by African Americans a few years before. I thought it was interesting how the Chinese immigrants were excluded from society when African Americans were able to be recognized through the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments.
ReplyDeleteI liked how you added that the Chinese people made up a large part of the people building the transcontinental railroad.
source - https://www.history.com/topics/immigration/chinese-exclusion-act-1882
Reading about the vast migration of Chinese immigrants made me think back to our field trip in 6th grade to China Town in San Francisco. It turns out that the founding and development of China Town does have its roots going back to that of the Gold Rush. Chinese immigrants first began migrating back in 1848 and gradually increased throughout the 19th and 20th century. Thus, the vast migrations of Chinese workers lead to the Chinese Exclusion act of 1882 which as described in the article. One interesting fact was that of the 153 pieces of property in China Town in 1873, only 10 of which belonged to Chinese. The rest of which belonged to whites of European origin. Furthermore, the Chinese Exclusion act was repealed by Congress during World War 2, but they still limited migration. Finally, the Civil Rights act of 1965 further increased the quota as the US finally began to embrace a multicultural society.
ReplyDeleteSource:
https://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h2715.html
https://www.history.com/topics/immigration/san-francisco-chinatown
Great blog post! You mentioned briefly on how many Chinese immigrants became workers for the Transcontinental railroad, so I did a bit more research on that. In order to carve out mountains, workers had to drill holes in the rock in order to be able to place a dynamite charge. They would have to light a fuse, and quickly run out to avoid rock falls and getting blown up. Chinese were often paid 30-50% less wages than their whites for the same job and thousands died while working.
ReplyDeleteSource:
https://www.uscitizenship.info/Chinese-immigration-and-the-Transcontinental-railroad/
I thought it was very interesting that you added details and background information, this really helped the reader to understand the intentions of the immigration and helped to illustrate the future struggle they would experience. This is also helped to set the tone to understanding the struggle of immigration and the mass discrimination experienced by these certain immigrants. I thought this was really depicted in this post and it connected all aspects of the issue to paint a larger and more clear picture.
ReplyDeleteI found this post very intriguing. I appreciated the way you compares the Chinese Exclusion Act to the way African Americans were treated. It really helped to illustrate the dreary position of Chinese immigrants. I did some research on the influence of this on the future of the United States, and I found that, like you said, the act extended all the way to 1973, however, I also discovered that this act not only helped to encourage other countries to accept exclusionary policies, but also to further exclude groups in the United States, such as Middle Easterners, Hindu and East Indians, and the Japanese. It's very sad that this is a part of American history. This article was well done!
ReplyDeletehttps://www.history.com/topics/immigration/chinese-exclusion-act-1882