Chinese Immigration Thesis

On January 24th, 1848, a man named James W. Marshall ignited the gold rush in Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. Many Americans flocked to the west coast to try to get rich quick, but there was also a huge influx of people from China. The people who came from China were poor and living in unlivable conditions; therefore, if they could find a way into America they could create a healthy life and make enough money to send for the rest of their family to come. People from China did not just come to America to work in the the mines, they came to the United States to sell and create textiles, run hotels and complete tasks other men thought they should not have to do. The news of the Gold Rush pulled the Chinese to America, but it wouldn’t keep
After the Transcontinental Railroad was constructed, the fate of the Chinese took a dive for the worse because in 1882, the United States of America created the Chinese Exclusion Act. The Chinese Exclusion Act was established to end Chinese immigration and shut the “golden gates” of America. Prior to 1882, the Chinese were viewed as tolerable and hard working, but as soon as the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed, people recognized the Chinese as dirty, lazy, and unworthy to be in America. As James Blaine said,
“Chinese immigrants “vicious,” “odious,” “abominable,” “dangerous,” and “revolting… If as a nation we have the right to keep out infectious diseases, if we have the right to exclude the criminal classes from coming to us, we surely have the right to exclude that immigration which reeks with impurity and which cannot come to us without plenteously sowing the seeds of moral and physical disease, destitution, and death.” “I am opposed to the Chinese coming here; I am opposed to making them citizens; I am opposed to making them
The Act states that “in the opinion of the Government of the United States the coming of Chinese laborers to this country endangers the good order of certain localities within the territory . . . Therefore, Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That from and after the expiration of ninety days next after the passage of this act, and until the expiration of ten years next after the passage of this act, the coming of Chinese laborers to the United States be, and the same is hereby, suspended; and during such suspension it shall not be lawful for any Chinese laborer to come, or, having so come after the expiration of said ninety days, to remain within the United States.The Chinese Exclusion Act also required Chinese “non-laborers” in China who desired to enter the U.S. to obtain certification from the Chinese government that declared that they were qualified to immigrate. This group, however, faced difficulty legally proving that they were not laborers because the exclusion act defined excludable as “skilled and unskilled laborers and Chinese employed in mining.” By this “definition” very few Chinese could enter the country under the 1882 law. The Chinese already in the U.S. also faced new requirements under the1882 act. The Act states