Chinese Exclusion Act different from Immigration Act of 1924
Content
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 sex workers, and the Naturalization Act of 1790 prohibited naturalization of non-white subjects. The Chinese Exclusion Act excluded Chinese laborers, meaning "skilled and unskilled laborers and Chinese employed in mining", from entering the country for ten years under penalty of imprisonment and deportation.The Chinese Exclusion Act required the few non-laborers who sought entry to obtain certification from the Chinese government that they were qualified to emigrate. However, this group found it increasingly difficult to prove that they were not laborers 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. Diplomatic officials and other officers on business, along with their house servants, for the Chinese government were also allowed entry as long as they had the proper certification verifying their credentials.The Chinese Exclusion Act also affected the Chinese 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. 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 abodes.Amendments made in 1884 tightened the provisions that allowed previous immigrants to leave and return and clarified that the law applied to ethnic Chinese regardless of their country of origin. The 1888 Scott Act expanded upon the Chinese Exclusion Act, prohibiting reentry into the U.S. after leaving. Only teachers, students, government officials, tourists, and merchants were exempt.Constitutionality of the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Scott Act was upheld by the Supreme Court in Chae Chan Ping v. United States (1889); the Supreme Court declared that "the power of exclusion of foreigners [is] an incident of sovereignty belonging to the government of the United States as a part of those sovereign powers delegated by the constitution". The act was renewed for ten years by the 1892 Geary Act, and again with no terminal date in 1902. When the act was extended in 1902, it required "each Chinese resident to register and obtain a certificate of residence. Without a certificate, he or she faced deportation."Between 1882 and 1905, about 10,000 Chinese appealed against negative immigration decisions to federal court, usually via a petition for habeas corpus. In most of these cases, the courts ruled in favor of the petitioner. 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 United States v. 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. There was one 1885 case in San Francisco, however, in which Treasury Department officials in Washington overturned a decision to deny entry to two Chinese students.One of the critics of the Chinese Exclusion Act was the anti-slavery/anti-imperialist Republican senator George Frisbie Hoar of Massachusetts who described the act as "nothing less than the legalization of racial discrimination".
The laws were driven largely by racial concerns; immigration of persons of other races was not yet limited. On the other hand, most people and unions strongly supported the Chinese Exclusion Act, including the American Federation of Labor and 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. 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.
For all practical purposes, the Chinese Exclusion Act, along with the restrictions that followed it, froze the Chinese community in place in 1882. Limited immigration from China continued until the repeal of the act in 1943. From 1910 to 1940, the Angel Island Immigration Station on what is now Angel Island State Park in San Francisco Bay served as the processing center for most of the 56,113 Chinese immigrants who are recorded as immigrating or returning from China; upwards of 30% more who arrived there were returned to China. The Chinese population in the U.S. declined from approximately 105,000 in 1880, to 89,000 in 1900, and to 61,000 in 1920.The act exempted merchants, and restaurant owners could apply for merchant visas beginning in 1915 after a federal court ruling. This led to the rapid growth of Chinese restaurants in the 1910s and 1920s as restaurant owners could leave and reenter along with family members from China.Later, the Immigration Act of 1924 restricted immigration even further, excluding all classes of Chinese immigrants and extending restrictions to other Asian immigrant groups. Until these restrictions were relaxed in the middle of the twentieth century, Chinese immigrants were forced to live a life separated from their families, and to build ethnic enclaves in which they could survive on their own (Chinatown). The Chinese Exclusion Act did not address the problems that whites were facing; in fact, the Chinese were quickly and eagerly replaced by the Japanese, who assumed the role of the Chinese in society. Unlike the Chinese, some Japanese were even able to climb the rungs of society by setting up businesses or becoming truck farmers. However, the Japanese were later targeted in the act of 1924, which banned immigration from east Asia entirely.
In 1891, the Chinese government refused to accept U.S. senator Henry W. Blair as U.S. minister to China due to his abusive remarks regarding China during negotiations of the Chinese Exclusion Act.
The American Christian George F. Pentecost spoke out against Western imperialism in China, saying:I personally feel convinced that it would be a good thing for America if the embargo on Chinese immigration were removed. I think that the annual admission of 100,000 into this country would be a good thing for the country. And if the same thing were done in the Philippines those islands would be a veritable Garden of Eden in twenty-five years. The presence of Chinese workmen in this country would, in my opinion, do a very great deal toward solving our labor problems. There is no comparison between the Chinaman, even of the lowest coolie class, and the man who comes here from Southeastern Europe, from Russia, or from Southern Italy. The Chinese are thoroughly good workers. That is why the laborers here hate them. I think, too, that the emigration to America would help the Chinese. At least he would come into contact with some real Christian people in America. The Chinaman lives in squalor because he is poor. If he had some prosperity his squalor would cease.
not same as not identical to distinct from separate from unlike