page_title: Asian immigration to the United States
section_title: First major wave of Asian immigration (1850–1917)
hierarchical_section_title: Asian immigration to the United States / History / First major wave of Asian immigration (1850–1917)
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of a "hindu bed," makeshift shelter for Indian farm laborers, most likely shot in California.
context_page_description: Asian immigration to the United States refers to immigration to the United States from part of the continent of Asia, which includes East Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia. Asian-origin populations have historically been in the territory that would eventually become the United States since the 16th century. The first major wave of Asian immigration occurred in the late 19th century, primarily in Hawaii and the West Coast. Asian Americans experienced exclusion, and limitations to immigration, by the United States law between 1875 and 1965, and were largely prohibited from naturalization until the 1940s. Since the elimination of Asian exclusion laws and the reform of the immigration system in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, there has been a large increase in the number of immigrants to the United States from Asia.
context_section_description: By the 1830s, East Asian groups had begun immigrating to Hawaii, where American capitalists and missionaries had established plantations and settlements. Originating primarily from China, Japan, Korea, India, Russia and the Philippines, these early migrants were predominantly contract workers who labored on plantations. With the annexation of Hawaii by the United States in 1893, a large population of Asians lived in US territory and more would continue to immigrate. As American capitalists established sugar cane plantations in Hawaii in the 19th century, they turned, through organizations such as the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society, to the Chinese as a source of cheap labor as early as the 1830s, with the first formal contract laborers arriving in 1852. Resistance from plantation laborers protesting low wages and tensions between various native and immigrant groups encouraged plantation owners to import more labor from different Asian countries to keep wages low. Between 1885 and 1924, "some 30,000 Japanese had gone to [Hawaii] as kan'yaku imin, or government-sponsored contract laborers." Between 1894 and 1924, roughly 170,000 Japanese immigrants went to Hawaii as private contract laborers, family members of existing immigrants, and merchants. Taking refuge from Japanese imperialism and growing poverty and famine in Korea, and encouraged by Christian missionaries, thousands of Koreans migrated to Hawaii in the early 1900s. Filipinos, who were American colonial subjects after 1898, migrated by the "tens of thousands" to Hawaii in the early 1900s.
  The first major wave of Asian immigration to the continental United States occurred primarily on the West Coast during the California Gold Rush, starting in the 1850s. Whereas, Chinese immigrants numbered less than 400 in 1848 and 25,000 by 1852. Most Chinese immigrants in California, which they called Gam Saan ("Gold Mountain"), were also from the Guangdong province; they sought opportunity in the young United States, and hoped to earn wealth to send back to their families in China. As in Hawaii, many capitalists in California and elsewhere (including as far as North Adams, Massachusetts) sought Asian immigrants to fill an increasing demand for labor in gold mines, factories, and on the Transcontinental Railroad. Some plantation owners in the South sought Chinese labor as a cheap means to replace the free labor of slavery. Chinese laborers generally arrived in California with the help of brokers in Hong Kong and other ports under the credit-ticket system, where they would pay back money loaned from brokers with their wages upon arrival. In addition to laborers, merchants also migrated from China, opening businesses and stores, including those that would form the beginnings of China towns.
  Japanese, Korean, and South Asian immigrants also arrived in the continental United States starting from the late 1800s and onwards to fill demands for labor. Japanese immigrants were primarily farmers facing economic upheaval during the Meiji Restoration; they began to migrate in large numbers to the continental United States (having already been migrating to Hawaii since 1885) in the 1890s, after the Chinese exclusion (see below). By 1924, 180,000 Japanese immigrants had gone to the mainland. Filipino migration to North America continued in this period with reports of "Manila men" in early gold camps in Mariposa County, California in the late 1840s. The 1880 census counted 105,465 Chinese and 145 Japanese, indicating that Asian immigration to the continent by this point consisted primarily of Chinese immigrants, overwhelmingly present in California.
  In the 1860s and 1870s, nativist hostility to the presence of Asian laborers in the continental United States grew and intensified, with the formation of organizations such as the Asiatic Exclusion League. East Asian immigrants, particularly Chinese Americans who composed the majority of the population on the mainland, were seen as the "yellow peril" and suffered violence and discrimination. Lynchings of Chinese were common and a large-scale o
caption: Makeshift shelter for Indian farm laborers (referred to as a "Hindu bed") in California.
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