A late-nineteenth century law that banned Chinese people from immigrating to the United States. It stayed in effect till 1943. A very interesting read.
The Chinese Exclusion Act was the first significant restriction on free immigration in U.S. history. The Act excluded Chinese “skilled and unskilled laborers and Chinese employed in mining” from entering the country for ten years under penalty of imprisonment and deportation.
One of the critics of the Chinese Exclusion Act was the anti-slavery/anti-imperialist Republican Senator George Frisbie Hoar of Massachusetts who described the Act as “nothing less than the legalization of racial discrimination.”
Later, the Immigration Act of 1924 would restrict immigration even further, excluding all classes of Chinese immigrants and extending restrictions to other Asian immigrant groups. Until these restrictions were relaxed in the middle of the twentieth century, Chinese immigrants were forced to live a life apart, and to build a society in which they could survive on their own.
