Editing Asian Americans (section)

===Exclusion era===
Under United States law during this period, particularly the [[Naturalization Act of 1790]], only "free white persons" were eligible to naturalize as American citizens. Ineligibility for citizenship prevented Asian immigrants from accessing a variety of rights, such as voting.<ref>{{cite book|last=Ngai|first=Mae M.|title=Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America – Updated Edition|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=X1dzAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA2|date=27 April 2014|publisher=Princeton University Press|isbn=978-1-4008-5023-5|page=2|access-date=March 14, 2020|archive-date=June 1, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200601053859/https://books.google.com/books?id=X1dzAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA2|url-status=live}}</ref> [[Bhicaji Balsara]] became the first known Indian-born person to gain naturalized US citizenship.<ref>{{cite book |author=Elliott Robert Barkan |title=Immigrants in American History: Arrival, Adaptation, and Integration [4 volumes]: Arrival, Adaptation, and Integration |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SOvskj0HNt8C&pg=PT301 |date=17 January 2013 |publisher=ABC-CLIO |isbn=978-1-59884-220-3 |page=301 |access-date=March 17, 2018 |archive-date=May 28, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200528103822/https://books.google.com/books?id=SOvskj0HNt8C&pg=PT301 |url-status=live }}</ref> Balsara's naturalization was not the norm but an exception; in a pair of cases, ''[[Ozawa v. United States]]'' (1922) and ''[[United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind]]'' (1923), the Supreme Court upheld the racial qualification for citizenship and ruled that Asians were not "white persons". Second-generation Asian Americans, however, could become US citizens due to the [[Birthright citizenship in the United States|birthright citizenship]] clause of the [[Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Fourteenth Amendment]]; this guarantee was confirmed as applying regardless of race or ancestry by the Supreme Court in ''[[United States v. Wong Kim Ark]]'' (1898).<ref>{{cite journal |last=Soodalter |first=Ron |year=2016 |title=By Soil Or By Blood |journal=American History |volume=50 |issue=6 |pages=56–63 }}<br />Not including children of diplomats.</ref>

From the 1880s to the 1920s, the United States passed laws inaugurating an era of exclusion of Asian immigrants. While the overall number of Asian immigrants was relatively small compared to those from other regions, their concentration in the West contributed to the rise of nativist sentiment, often referred to as the "[[yellow peril]]." Congress passed [[Chinese Exclusion Act|restrictive legislation]] which prohibited nearly all Chinese immigration to the United States in the 1880s.<ref>Takaki, ''Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans'' (1998) pp 370–78</ref> Japanese immigration was sharply curtailed by a [[Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907|diplomatic agreement]] in 1907. The [[Asiatic Barred Zone Act]] in 1917 further barred immigration from nearly all of Asia, the "Asiatic Zone".<ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Rothman |first1=Lily |last2=Ronk |first2=Liz |date=2 February 2017 |title=Congress Tightened Immigration Laws 100 Years Ago. Here's Who They Turned Away |url=https://time.com/4645728/1917-immigration-law-photos/ |magazine=Time |access-date=14 March 2019 |quote=Excluded from entry in 1917 were not only convicted criminals, chronic alcoholics and people with contagious diseases, but also people with epilepsy, anarchists, most people who couldn't read and almost everyone from Asia, as well as laborers who were "induced, assisted, encouraged, or solicited to migrate to this country by offers or promises of employment, whether such offers or promises are true or false" and "persons likely to become a public charge". |archive-date=June 30, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200630192013/https://time.com/4645728/1917-immigration-law-photos/ |url-status=live }}<br />{{cite magazine |last=Boissoneault |first=Lorraine |date=6 February 2017 |title=Literacy Tests and Asian Exclusion Were the Hallmarks of the 1917 Immigration Act |url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-america-grappled-immigration-100-years-ago-180962058/ |magazine=Smithsonian |access-date=14 March 2019 |quote=The act also levied an $8 tax on every adult immigrant (about $160 today) and barred all immigrants from the "Asiatic zone". |archive-date=March 19, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190319064156/https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-america-grappled-immigration-100-years-ago-180962058/ |url-status=live }}<br />{{cite web |url=https://www.history.com/news/the-birth-of-illegal-immigration |title=The Birth of 'Illegal' Immigration |last=Little |first=Becky |date=7 September 2017 |website=History |access-date=14 March 2019 |quote=A decade later, the Asiatic Barred Zone Act banned most immigration from Asia, as well as immigration by prostitutes, polygamists, anarchists, and people with contagious diseases. |archive-date=March 14, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190314192930/https://www.history.com/news/the-birth-of-illegal-immigration |url-status=live }}<br />{{USCongRec|1917|876|date=5 February 1917}}<br />{{cite book |author=Uma A. Segal |title=A Framework for Immigration: Asians in the United States |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KVViCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA134 |date=14 August 2002 |publisher=Columbia University Press |isbn=978-0-231-50633-5 |page=134 |quote=Less than ten years later, Congress passed the Immigration Act of February 5, 1917 (commonly known as the Barred Zone Act), which enumerated the classes of people who were ineligible to enter the United States. Among them were those who were natives of a zone defined by latitude and longitude the geographic area identified became known as the Asiatic Barred Zone, and the act clearly became the Asiatic Barred Zone Act. Under the Asiatic Barred Zone Act, the only Asians allowed entry into the United States were Japanese and Filipinos. |access-date=March 15, 2019 |archive-date=June 4, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200604014326/https://books.google.com/books?id=KVViCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA134 |url-status=live }}<br />{{cite web |url=https://www.loc.gov/law/help/statutes-at-large/64th-congress/session-2/c64s2ch29.pdf |title=CHAP. 29. – An Act To regulate the immigration of aliens to, and the residence of aliens in, the United States. |author=Sixty-Fourth Congress |date=5 February 1917 |website=Library of Congress |access-date=14 March 2019 |quote=unless otherwise provided for by existing treaties, persons who are natives of islands not possessed by the United States adjacent to the Content of Asia, situate south of the twentieth parallel latitude north, west of the one hundred and sixtieth meridian of longitude east of Greenwich, and north of the tenth parallel of latitude south, or who are natives of any country, province, or dependency situate on the Continent of Asia west of the one hundred and tenth meridian of longitude east from Greenwich and east of the fiftieth meridian of longitude east from Greenwich and south of the fiftieth parallel of latitude north, except that portion of said territory situate between the fiftieth and the sixty-fourth meridians of longitude east from Greenwich and the twenty-fourth and thirty-eighth parallels of latitude north, and no alien now in any way excluded from, or prevented from entering, the United States shall be admitted to the United States. |author-link=64th United States Congress |archive-date=April 12, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190412011546/https://www.loc.gov/law/help/statutes-at-large/64th-congress/session-2/c64s2ch29.pdf |url-status=live }} [http://library.uwb.edu/Static/USimmigration/39%20stat%20874.pdf Alt URL] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190508163451/http://library.uwb.edu/Static/USimmigration/39%20stat%20874.pdf |date=May 8, 2019 }}</ref> The [[Immigration Act of 1924]] provided that no "alien ineligible for citizenship" could be admitted as an immigrant to the United States, consolidating the prohibition of Asian immigration.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Franks |first=Joel |year=2015 |title=Anti-Asian Exclusion In The United States During The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries: The History Leading To The Immigration Act Of 1924 |journal=Journal of American Ethnic History |volume=34 |issue=3 |pages=121–122 |doi=10.5406/jamerethnhist.34.3.0121}}<br />Takaki, ''Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans'' (1998) pp 197–211</ref>