On May 6, 1882, President Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act into law, barring Chinese laborers from entering the United States for ten years and prohibiting Chinese immigrants already in the country from becoming citizens. Driven by west-coast labor agitation and racial animus following Chinese railroad and mining labor influxes, the law marked the first major restriction on immigration in American history based explicitly on nationality.
Chinese immigrants had arrived in large numbers during the California Gold Rush and were later recruited by the thousands to build the Central Pacific Railroad, work that was grueling and dangerous, blasting tunnels through the Sierra Nevada. As the economy soured in the 1870s, white laborers on the West Coast, organized in groups like the Workingmen's Party, blamed Chinese workers for depressing wages, and anti-Chinese riots broke out in cities including Los Angeles and Rock Springs, Wyoming.
Congress responded to the political pressure with the Chinese Exclusion Act, which suspended immigration of Chinese laborers for ten years, required existing Chinese residents to carry certificates proving their legal status, and denied naturalization rights to Chinese immigrants. It was renewed and tightened over subsequent decades, notably the 1892 Geary Act, and was not repealed until the Magnuson Act of 1943, itself only a modest loosening during wartime alliance with China.
The law set a grim legal precedent, establishing that the United States could and would restrict immigration based purely on race and nationality, a template later applied to other groups. Chinese American communities endured decades of legal exclusion, family separation, and discrimination as a direct result.
Key people: Chester A. Arthur