And many Republicans in California opposed their party’s proposed 15 th Amendment-which ended racial discrimination at the polls-because it opened a doorway for Chinese men to become eligible voters. In 1871, seventeen Chinese men and boys were massacred in Los Angeles. He frequently ended his speeches by saying “and whatever happens, the Chinese must go.” Meanwhile, politicians opposed civil rights for Asian immigrants and engaged in fearmongering by claiming that Chinese people spread germs for which they were immune but white people were not. California labor leader Denis Kearney famously argued in the 1870s and 1880s that Chinese laborers were tools of wealthy capitalists who conspired to destroy working class laborers. Workers argued that an oversupply of Chinese laborers lowered wages and took jobs away from white workers. Many white laborers and politicians vocally complained about Chinese immigration and sometimes resorted to violence against Asians. Rather than punishing men or placing a state ban on prostitution, however, the Page Act targeted Chinese women as threatening the institution of marriage. Interestingly, prostitution was a legal occupation under California law dating back to the 1850s, and men of all races would have frequented prostitution houses. Tongs would sometimes pay smugglers to kidnap Chinese women and remove them from their home country. According to historian Judy Yung, Chinese secret societies known as “tongs” oversaw a prostitution ring in San Francisco. Although it is tough to measure in exact terms, prostitution rings did emerge with some frequency in California. Most Chinese men struggled to support themselves and did not earn enough money to bring their wives and children to the U.S. Looking to exploit this labor supply and keep costs as low as possible, many businesses hired Chinese laborers for low wages. Chinese men during the Civil War era worked in the West as manual laborers in railroad construction, mining, levee building, and factories, among other occupations. The first major wave of Chinese immigration began in the wake of the California Gold Rush of 1848. Finally, the act banned people who had been convicted of felonies in their home country from immigrating to the United States.Īnti-Asian and anti-Chinese sentiment had long existed in the U.S., especially in Western states like California and Nevada. Second, it effectively banned the immigration of Chinese women by portraying most of them as arriving in the U.S. First, it authorized the use of federal agents at immigration ports to search and question “any subject of China, Japan, or any Oriental country” to determine if that person had come “without their free and voluntary consent, for the purpose of holding them to a term of service." If agents suspected that the person had come involuntarily to engage in “lewd and immoral purposes” while in the U.S., they could be expelled. The act established three different goals. The Page Act of 1875 was the product of many political factors, including concerns over involuntary servitude, declining wages in the labor market, prostitution, and popular racist stereotypes about people of Asian descent. However, the federal government's relationship to immigration policy changed on March 3, 1875, when President Ulysses S. That law, which was passed in 1803 but poorly enforced, banned the "importation" of any free "negro, mulatto, or other person of color" to the United States in the wake of the Haitian Revolution. However, only one federal law existed to restrict immigration between 17. Furthermore, Atlantic seaboard states such as New York and Massachusetts used state “poor laws” to prevent some immigrants from settling within their borders before the Civil War. citizenship to immigrants who were defined as “white” until 1870, when it was expanded to include immigrants of African descent. For example, the Naturalization Act of 1790 restricted U.S. To be sure, some restrictions on citizenship were established during the republic’s formative years. Many people living in the United States today may be surprised to learn that the federal government largely divorced itself from immigration policy for nearly 100 years. "The Chinese Question," by Thomas Nast (1881)
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