Editing Chinese Exclusion Act (section)

== Content ==
The Act was the first US immigration law to target a specific ethnicity or nationality.<ref name="Crean2024" />{{Rp|page=25}} The earlier [[Page Act of 1875]] had prohibited immigration of Asian forced laborers and sex workers, and the [[Naturalization Act of 1790]] prohibited [[naturalization]] of non-white subjects. The Chinese Exclusion Act excluded Chinese laborers, meaning "skilled and unskilled laborers and Chinese employed in mining", from entering the country for ten years under penalty of imprisonment and deportation.<ref name="LOC2003">{{Cite web |date=2003-09-01 |title=Exclusion |url=https://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/immigration/chinese6.html |access-date=2010-01-25 |publisher=[[Library of Congress]]}}</ref><ref name="U.S. News & World Report">{{Cite news |title=The People's Vote: Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) |url=https://www.usnews.com/usnews/documents/docpages/document_page47.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070328223654/http://www.usnews.com/usnews/documents/docpages/document_page47.htm |archive-date=28 March 2007 |access-date=5 May 2014 |work=U.S. News & World Report}}</ref>
[[File:Chinese_exclusion_article_1901.jpg|thumb|Front page of ''[[The San Francisco Call]]'' from November 20, 1901, discussing the Chinese Exclusion Convention.]]
The Chinese Exclusion Act required the few non-laborers who sought entry to obtain certification from the Chinese government that they were qualified to emigrate. However, this group found it increasingly difficult to prove that they were not laborers<ref name="U.S. News & World Report" /> because the 1882 Act defined excludables as "skilled and unskilled laborers and Chinese employed in mining". Thus very few Chinese could enter the country under the 1882 law. Diplomatic officials and other officers on business, along with their house servants, for the Chinese government were also allowed entry as long as they had the proper certification verifying their credentials.<ref>{{Cite web |date=9 April 2021 |title=Welcome to OurDocuments.gov |url=https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?doc=47&page=transcript |website=ourdocuments.gov}}</ref>

The Chinese Exclusion Act also affected the Chinese who had already settled in the United States. Any Chinese who left the United States had to obtain certifications for reentry, and the act made Chinese immigrants permanent aliens by excluding them from US citizenship.<ref name="LOC2003" /><ref name="U.S. News & World Report" /> After the act's passage, Chinese men in the US had little chance of ever reuniting with their wives, or of starting families in their new abodes.<ref name="LOC2003" />

Amendments made in 1884 tightened the provisions that allowed previous immigrants to leave and return and clarified that the law applied to ethnic Chinese regardless of their country of origin.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Chinese Exclusion Act, 1884 Amendments |url=https://immigrants.harpweek.com/chineseamericans/2keyissues/ChineseExclusionAct1884.htm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20000930123212/https://immigrants.harpweek.com/chineseamericans/2keyissues/ChineseExclusionAct1884.htm |archive-date=September 30, 2000 |access-date=July 13, 2021 |publisher=HarpWeek}}</ref> The 1888 [[Scott Act (1888)|Scott Act]] expanded upon the Chinese Exclusion Act, prohibiting reentry into the US after leaving.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Chinese Immigration and the Chinese Exclusion Acts |url=https://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/chinese-immigration |access-date=July 13, 2021 |publisher=U.S. Department of State}}</ref> Only teachers, students, government officials, tourists, and merchants were exempt.{{sfn|Takaki|1998|pp=111–112}}

Constitutionality of the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Scott Act was upheld by the Supreme Court in ''[[Chae Chan Ping v. United States]]'' (1889); the Supreme Court declared that "the power of exclusion of foreigners [is] an incident of sovereignty belonging to the government of the United States as a part of those sovereign powers delegated by the constitution". The act was renewed for ten years by the 1892 [[Geary Act]], and again with no terminal date in 1902.<ref name="U.S. News & World Report" /> When the act was extended in 1902, it required "each Chinese resident to register and obtain a certificate of residence. Without a certificate, he or she faced deportation."<ref name="U.S. News & World Report" />

Between 1882 and 1905, about 10,000 Chinese appealed against negative immigration decisions to federal court, usually via a petition for [[Habeas corpus in the United States|habeas corpus]].<ref name="Daniels1999">{{Cite journal |last=Daniels |first=Roger |date=Spring 1999 |title=Book Review: Laws Harsh as Tigers: Chinese Immigrants and the Shaping of Modern Immigration Law – Lucy E. Salyer |url=http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/lhr/17.1/br_11.html |url-status=dead |journal=Law and History Review |volume=17 |issue=1 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120925185318/http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/lhr/17.1/br_11.html |archive-date=September 25, 2012}}</ref> In most of these cases, the courts ruled in favor of the petitioner.<ref name="Daniels1999" /> Except in cases of bias or negligence, these petitions were barred by an act that passed Congress in 1894 and was upheld by the US Supreme Court in ''United States v. Lem Moon Sing'' (1895). In ''[[United States v. Ju Toy]]'' (1905), the US Supreme Court reaffirmed that the port inspectors and the Secretary of Commerce had final authority on who could be admitted. Ju Toy's petition was thus barred despite the fact that the district court found that he was an American citizen. The Supreme Court determined that refusing entry at a port does not require due process and is legally equivalent to refusing entry at a land crossing. All these developments, along with the extension of the act in 1902, triggered a boycott of US goods in China between 1904 and 1906.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lee |first=Jonathan H. X. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pcLQCgAAQBAJ&pg=PR26 |title=Chinese Americans: The History and Culture of a People |publisher=ABC-CLIO |year=2015 |isbn=978-1-61069-549-7 |page=26}}</ref> There was one 1885 case in San Francisco, however, in which Treasury Department officials in Washington overturned a decision to deny entry to two Chinese students.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lee |first=Erika |title=At America's Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882–1943 |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |year=2003 |isbn=978-0-8078-2775-8 |page=51}}</ref>

One of the critics of the Chinese Exclusion Act was the anti-imperialist senator [[George Frisbie Hoar]], a [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican]] from [[Massachusetts]] who described the act as "nothing less than the legalization of racial discrimination".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Daniels |first=Roger |title=Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life |publisher=Harper Perennial |year=2002 |isbn=978-0-06-050577-6 |page=271}}</ref>
[[File:The_only_one_barred_out_cph.3b48680.jpg|left|thumb|A political cartoon from 1882, showing a Chinese man being barred entry to the "Golden Gate of Liberty". The caption reads, "We must draw the line ''somewhere'', you know."]]
The laws were driven largely by racial concerns; immigration of persons of other races was not yet limited.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Chin |first=Gabriel J. |year=1998 |title=Segregation's Last Stronghold: Race Discrimination and the Constitutional Law of Immigration |journal=UCLA Law Review |volume=46 |ssrn=1121119 |number=1}}</ref> On the other hand, most people and unions strongly supported the Chinese Exclusion Act, including the [[American Federation of Labor]] and [[Knights of Labor]], a [[Trade union|labor union]], who supported it because it believed that industrialists were using Chinese workers as a wedge to keep wages low.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Kennedy |first1=David M. |url=https://archive.org/details/americanpageanth00kenn |title=The American Pageant |last2=Cohen |first2=Lizabeth |last3=Bailey |first3=Thomas A. |publisher=Houghton Mifflin |year=2002 |edition=12th |location=New York |url-access=registration}}</ref> Among labor and leftist organizations, the [[Industrial Workers of the World]] were the sole exception to this pattern. The IWW openly opposed the Chinese Exclusion Act from its inception in 1905.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Choi |first=Jennifer Jung Hee |year=1999 |title=The Rhetoric of Inclusion: The I.W.W. and Asian Workers |url=http://userwww.sfsu.edu/epf/journal_archive/volume_VIII,_1999/choi_j.pdf |url-status=dead |journal=Ex Post Facto: Journal of the History Students at San Francisco State University |volume=8 |page=9 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121016142634/http://userwww.sfsu.edu/epf/journal_archive/volume_VIII,_1999/choi_j.pdf |archive-date=2012-10-16 |access-date=2015-05-06}}</ref>
[[File:Paperson.jpg|thumb|Certificate of identity issued to Yee Wee Thing certifying that he is the son of a US citizen, issued November 21, 1916. This was necessary for his immigration from China to the United States.]]
The racial concerns the Exclusion Act drew justification from were along the lines of a perceived 'moral deficiency' of Chinese immigrants, this charge stipulated the inherent unreliability and dishonesty of the immigrants on behalf of their race.<ref name="Wellborn1912" />{{sfn|Sandmeyer|1939|p=41}} These assumptions of character were frequently assigned on behalf of the poor communities these immigrants lived in with higher density, higher crime, saloons and opium dens.<ref name="Wellborn1912" /> This is however not an exhaustive list of charges brought against Chinese immigrants, many more assumptions were made such as them bringing leprosy to US shores.{{sfn|Sandmeyer|1939|p=41}} Some of the main proponents of this racialism were Irish immigrants in the West,<ref>{{Cite web |last=Bozich III |first=Frank A. |title=The unwanted immigrant |url=https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1194&context=honors201019#:~:text=From%201849%2D1880%2C%20Irish%20immigrants,to%20be%20considered%20white%20themselves |access-date=24 January 2024 |website=JMU Scholarly Commons |page=98}}</ref> the reason for this was that although granted entry under the [[Naturalization Act of 1790]] as a free 'white' people, the large numbers of immigrants from Europe starting in the 1840s created a situation where different white ethnicities were being made out to be more or less desirable compared to Anglo-Saxons.<ref name="Jacobson1998">{{Cite book |last=Jacobson |first=Matthew Frye |title=Whitness of a Different Color, European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=1998 |isbn=978-0-674-95191-4 |location=Cambridge, MA |pages=39–91}}</ref> In such a way the Celtic Irish in the east faced similar racialism at the hands of [[Nativism (politics)|nativists]], being categorized as 'dirty', 'drunken', and 'animalistic papists'.<ref name="Moon2018">{{Cite journal |last=Moon |first=Krystyn R. |date=May 2018 |title=Immigration Restrictions and International Education: Early Tensions in the Pacific Northwest, 1890s-1910s |journal=History of Education Quarterly |volume=58 |issue=2 |pages=261–294 |doi=10.1017/heq.2018.2 |s2cid=150233388}}</ref><ref name="Jacobson1998" /> In this way, under [[Denis Kearney]] and the Workingman's Party, many Irish immigrants who had migrated westward sought to shore up their 'whiteness' and redirect stereotypes about themselves by stressing the undesirability of the Chinese, non-white immigrants.<ref name="Moon2018" />

For all practical purposes, the Chinese Exclusion Act, along with the restrictions that followed it, froze the Chinese community in place in 1882. Limited immigration from China continued until the repeal of the act in 1943. From 1910 to 1940, the Angel Island Immigration Station on what is now [[Angel Island (California)|Angel Island State Park]] in [[San Francisco Bay]] served as the processing center for most of the 56,113 Chinese immigrants who are recorded as immigrating or returning from China; upwards of 30% more who arrived there were returned to China.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Dunigan |first=Grace |year=2017 |title=The Chinese Exclusion Act: Why It Matters Today |url=https://scholarlycommons.susqu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1031&context=supr |url-status=dead |journal=Susquehanna University Political Review |volume=8 |pages=82–89 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210920212012/https://scholarlycommons.susqu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1031&context=supr |archive-date=September 20, 2021 |access-date=December 7, 2017}}</ref> The Chinese population in the US declined from approximately 105,000 in 1880, to 89,000 in 1900, and to 61,000 in 1920.{{sfn|Takaki|1998|pp=111–112}}

Certain federal agencies were active in the 19th century to enforce the Exclusion Act. The [[United States Customs Service|Customs Service]] took the lead on this because of the maritime nature. In the 1900s the Office of the Superintendent of Immigration was established by the [[United States Department of the Treasury|Department of the Treasury]] and given responsibility for implementing federal regulations mandated by the Chinese exclusion laws. This organization is now known as the [[Immigration and Naturalization Service]] (INS).<ref>{{Cite web |date=15 August 2016 |title=Chinese Immigration and the Chinese in the United States |url=https://www.archives.gov/research/chinese-americans/guide |access-date=2024-04-25 |website=National Archives}}</ref>

The act exempted merchants, and restaurant owners could apply for merchant visas beginning in 1915 after a federal court ruling. This led to the rapid growth of [[Chinese restaurant]]s in the 1910s and 1920s as restaurant owners could leave and reenter along with family members from China.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Godoy |first=Maria |date=22 February 2016 |title=Lo Mein Loophole: How U.S. Immigration Law Fueled A Chinese Restaurant Boom |url=https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/02/22/467113401/lo-mein-loophole-how-u-s-immigration-law-fueled-a-chinese-restaurant-boom |access-date=2020-12-01 |publisher=NPR}}</ref>

Later, the [[Immigration Act of 1924]] restricted immigration even further, excluding all classes of Chinese immigrants and extending restrictions to other Asian immigrant groups.<ref name="LOC2003" /> Until these restrictions were relaxed in the middle of the twentieth century, Chinese immigrants were forced to live a life separated from their families, and to build ethnic enclaves in which they could survive on their own ([[Chinatown]]).<ref name="LOC2003" /> The Chinese Exclusion Act did not address the problems that whites were facing; in fact, the Chinese were quickly and eagerly replaced by the Japanese, who assumed the role of the Chinese in society. Unlike the Chinese, some Japanese were even able to climb the rungs of society by setting up businesses or becoming truck farmers.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Brinkley |first=Alan |title=American History: A Survey |publisher=McGraw-Hill |year=2005 |isbn=978-0-07-328047-9 |edition=12th}}{{page needed|date=February 2024}}</ref> However, the Japanese were later targeted in the Immigration Act of 1924, which banned immigration from East Asia entirely. The Chinese Exclusion Act was a tool with an aim to, maintain cheap accessible labor while stopping the excess population of Chinese immigrants from taking jobs from white Americans.

In 1891, the Chinese government refused to accept US Senator [[Henry W. Blair]] as US Minister to China due to his abusive remarks regarding China during negotiations of the Chinese Exclusion Act.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Denza |first=Eileen |title=Commentary to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2008 |isbn=978-0-19-921685-7 |edition=3rd |page=51}}</ref> The American Christian [[George F. Pentecost]] spoke out against Western imperialism in China, saying:<ref>{{Cite news |date=February 11, 1912 |title=America Not A Christian Nation, Says Dr. Pentecost |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1912/02/11/archives/america-not-a-christian-nation-says-dr-pentecost.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181125114036/https://www.nytimes.com/1912/02/11/archives/america-not-a-christian-nation-says-dr-pentecost.html |archive-date=25 November 2018 |access-date=24 November 2018 |work=The New York Times}}</ref><blockquote>I personally feel convinced that it would be a good thing for America if the embargo on Chinese immigration were removed. I think that the annual admission of 100,000 into this country would be a good thing for the country. And if the same thing were done in the Philippines those islands would be a veritable Garden of Eden in twenty-five years. The presence of Chinese workmen in this country would, in my opinion, do a very great deal toward solving our labor problems. There is no comparison between the Chinaman, even of the lowest coolie class, and the man who comes here from Southeastern Europe, from Russia, or from Southern Italy. The Chinese are thoroughly good workers. That is why the laborers here hate them. I think, too, that the emigration to America would help the Chinese. At least he would come into contact with some real Christian people in America. The Chinaman lives in squalor because he is poor. If he had some prosperity his squalor would cease.</blockquote>