The Chinese Exclusion Act ( 1882 - 1943 ) is a special law of the US Congress , issued May 6, 1882 in response to the massive immigration of the Chinese to the West of the country. The first and only official law in US history directed against representatives of a particular nationality (the remaining discriminatory laws of this country concerned races in general). The law prohibited any Chinese immigration and / or naturalization of Chinese already residing in the United States (however , Chinese-born children in the United States were already considered US citizens). Initially, the law was supposed to extend to 10 years, but it was valid until 1943 . By 1917, similar restrictions were extended to immigrants from Asia as a whole.
History
The first Chinese in the United States appeared in the 1840s, immediately after the seizure of Mexico from its former northern territories, which began the California Gold Rush of 1848. While there was a lot of gold, the Chinese who lived in separate Chinatowns were tolerated, but when its reserves ran out, tolerance began to disappear. The situation was saved only by the relatively small number of both Chinese and white immigrants.
In the 1960s, U.S. railroad companies attracted Chinese cool workers to coolies . In particular, in the second half of the 19th century, a particularly intensive influx of contract workers from China and some other Asian countries (mainly Japan and Korea) began. By 1880, more than 200 thousand Chinese settled in California, accounting for almost 10% of its population. In just 10 years, between 1871 and 1880, 123,201 Chinese arrived in the country, between 1881 and 1890 - 61,711 Chinese. Competition in the labor market has intensified, wages have fallen. In addition, the Chinese, among whom men clearly predominated, began to suspect excessive attention to white women , although they were not forbidden to have sex with black women , Mexicans, and Indian women . When the share of European immigrants of German origin fell below 50%, severe restrictions were imposed: on May 6, 1882, Congress passed the Exclusion of the Chinese Act, which in its original version banned any Chinese immigration and naturalization of Chinese who were already residents, i.e. permanent residents of the United States.
Consequences
Despite the fact that the Exclusion of the Chinese Act of 1882 and suspended their immigration for ten years, there were already about 200 thousand workers from China in the western United States who had arrived there before this decree. Some of them have already managed to acquire offspring. Fear of the so-called yellow danger and the rapidly growing number of Chinese people caused constant skirmishes on racial, ethnic and linguistic grounds. The compact settlements of the Chinese with specific food, hieroglyphs and the unusual appearance of the Chinese of that time played an important role in this: the men wore oriental robes , wide-brimmed hats, sandals, had long mustaches, beards and hair braided in pigtails. On September 2, 1885, Wyoming became notorious not only for the constant persecution of the Indians, but also for the bloody Chinese massacre in Rock Springs , which occurred due to intense competition between the two groups in the highly specialized labor market.