We think of America as a nation of immigrants. A place where people from all over the world were welcomed with open arms.

This is one of the most pernicious myths of American history.

The treatment received by the Chinese in America is remarkable not merely for its rabid racial hatred but that most people are unaware of it.

Chinese immigration to the United States began in the early 19th century. Most were labourers who worked on the transcontinental railroad and the mining industry. Though employers were eager to get this new and cheap labor, the danger of the “yellow peril” was continuously expounded by political parties, labor unions, and other organizations.

Newspapers condemned the policies of employers, and even church leaders denounced the entrance of these aliens into what was regarded as a land for whites only. So hostile was the opposition last that in 1882 the U.S. Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act which prohibited immigration from China for the next ten years. This law was extended by the Geary Act in 1892.

The Chinese Exclusion Act was the only U.S. law to prevent immigration and naturalization on the basis of race.

These laws brought additional suffering as they prevented the reunion of the families of thousands of Chinese men already living in America that had left China without their wives and children.

In 1924 legislation barred further entries of Chinese. All Asians, save those from the Philippines, (which had been annexed by the United States in 1898), were denied citizenship and naturalization, and prevented from marrying Caucasians or owning land.

Only since the 1940s when the US and China became allies during World War II, did the situation for Chinese Americans begin to improve, as restrictions on entry into the country, naturalization and mixed marriage were being lessened.

In 1943, Chinese immigration to the U.S. was once again permitted — by way of the Magnuson Act — thereby repealing 61 years of official racial discrimination against the Chinese. Large scale Chinese immigration did not occur until 1965 when the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 lifted national origin quotas.

The first Chinese immigrants arrived in 1820 according to U.S. government records, but there were fewer than 1,000 before the 1848 California Gold Rush which drew the first significant number of laborers from China who mined for gold and performed menial labor. There were 25,000 immigrants by 1852, and 105,465 by 1880, most of whom lived on the West Coast. Most of the early immigrants were young males with low educational levels from the Guangdong province.

From the outset, they were faced with the racism of settled European population, which culminated in massacres and forced relocations of Chinese migrants into what became known as Chinatowns.

Life in China had been acceptable until losing the First Opium War in 1840-1842. China was forced to give up its trade protectionism and to concede land settlements to the victorious foreign powers. The Second Opium War (1856-1860) and the Taiping Rebellion (1851-1864), led to more than 20 million deaths. This resulted in mass poverty and many millions left China nearly all settling in Southeast Asia.

Shortly after hearing from the Cantonese sailors and merchants who returned with early stories of the Californian Gold Rush that began in 1848, Chinese gold-seekers began arriving in America in 1849.

In 1852, the ratio of Chinese males to females in California was over a thousand to one. Due to the lack of Chinese women in the United States at that time, a number of men intermarried with Americans of European descent. In 1852, a special foreign miner’s tax aimed at the Chinese was passed by the California legislature. Given that the Chinese were ineligible for citizenship and constituted the largest percentage of the non-white population, the taxes were aimed at them and tax revenue was generated almost exclusively by the Chinese.

This tax required a payment of three dollars each month at a time when Chinese miners were making approximately six dollars a month.

The position of the Chinese gold seekers also was complicated by a decision of the California Supreme Court which decided in the case “The People of the State of California v. George W. Hall” (”People v. Hall”) in 1854 that the Chinese were not allowed to testify as witnesses before the court in California against white citizens, including those accused of murder. The decision was largely based upon the prevailing opinion that the Chinese were;

” a race of people whom nature has marked as inferior,
and who are incapable of progress or intellectual development
beyond a certain point, as their history has shown;
differing in language, opinions, color, and physical conformation;
between whom and ourselves nature has placed an
impassable difference and as such had no right
to swear away the life of a citizen or participate
with us in administering the affairs of our Government.”

The Chinese survived in America by collectivism; close networks of extended families, unions, clan associations and guilds, where people had a duty to protect and help one another.

At first these organizations only provided interpretation, lodgings and job finding services for newcomers. The Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (more commonly known as the “Chinese Six Companies” ) became the most powerful and politically vocal organization to represent the Chinese.

By resisting overt discrimination enacted against them, the local chapters of the national CCBA helped to bring a number of cases to the courts from the municipal level to the Supreme Court to fight discriminatory legislation and treatment.

The associations also took their cases to the press and worked with governmental institutions and the Chinese diplomatic missions to protect their rights.  Following a law enacted in New York, in 1933, in an attempt to evict Chinese from the laundry business, the Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance was founded.

When building the railroads, hiring Chinese as opposed to whites kept labor costs down by a third, since the company would not pay their board or lodging. The Central Pacific track was constructed primarily by Chinese immigrants, many of whom died.

When the railway projects completed, many of the Chinese workers relocated and looked for employment elsewhere, such as in farming, manufacturing and other industries. However, widespread anti-Chinese discrimination and violence from whites, including riots and murders, drove many into self-employment.

Up until the middle of the 19th century, wheat was primarily grown in California. The favorable climate allowed the beginning of the intensive cultivation of fruit, vegetables and flowers. A strong demand for these products existed on the East Coast. With the completion of the transcontinental railroad trade was possible. With a dire manpower shortage in the expanding Californian agriculture sector, white landowners began in the 1860s to put thousands of Chinese migrants to work in their large-scale farms and other agricultural enterprises. Many of these Chinese laborers were not unskilled seasonal workers, but were in fact experienced farmers, whose vital expertise the Californian fruit, vegetables and wine industries owe much to this day.

Despite this, the Chinese immigrants could not own any land on account of the laws in California at the time. Nevertheless they frequently pursued agricultural work under leases or profit-sharing contracts which they signed with their employers.

Chinese farmers were driven out during an outbreak of anti-Chinese violence in 1890 although they made up 75 percent of all Californian agricultural workers. The Chinese found refuge and shelter in the Chinatowns of large cities.

The vacant agricultural jobs subsequently proved unattractive to the unemployed white Europeans.

Experienced Chinese fishermen created a fishing economy which grew exponentially and by the 1880s had already extended along the whole of the West Coast of the United States from Canada to Mexico. With entire fleets of small boats (sampans) the Chinese fishermen caught herring, soles, smelts, cod, sturgeon, and shark. Their success success was met with a hostile reaction and white immigrants – Greeks, Italians and Dalmatians – exerted pressure on the California legislature, which expelled the Chinese fishermen with an array of taxes, laws and regulations.

They had to pay special taxes (Chinese Fisherman’s Tax),  were not allowed to fish with traditional Chinese nets nor with junks. The most disastrous effect occurred when the Scott Act, a federal US law adopted in 1888, established that the Chinese migrants, even when they had entered and were living the US legally, could not re-enter after having temporarily left US territory. The Chinese fishermen, in effect, could not leave the 3-mile zone of the west coast.

Many former fishermen found work in the salmon canneries which until the 1930s were major employers of Chinese migrants as white workers were not interested in engaging in such hard, seasonal and relatively unrewarding activities.

Since the California gold rush, many Chinese migrants made their living as domestic servants, housekeepers, running restaurants, laundries (leading to the 1886 Supreme Court decision Yick Wo v. Hopkins and then to the 1933 creation of the Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance) and a wide spectrum of shops.

In 1876, in response to the rising anti-Chinese hysteria, both major political parties included Chinese exclusion in their campaign platforms as a way to win votes taking advantage of the nation’s industrial crisis.

The 1906 San Francisco earthquake allowed a critical change to Chinese immigration patterns. The practice known as “Paper Sons” where Chinese would declare themselves to be United States citizens whose records were lost in the disaster.