In the spring of 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed by Congress and signed by President Chester A. Arthur. This act provided an absolute ten-year moratorium on Chinese labor immigration. For the first time, Federal law proscribed entry of an ethnic group on the premise that it endangered the good order of certain localities. Passage of the act marked the culmination of several decades of growing hostility in the United States to Chinese immigrants, which was fostered by competition for jobs and racial animosity. These documents, from the records of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, were filed in support of a request by a Loui Young, a member of a firm on Mott Street in New York City, to bring his son from China to the United States. Chinese Exclusion Act; Chinese-Americans; Discrimination; Emigration and immigration