Anti-Chinese Oppression and Rise of Chinese Immigration in US

The milestones of economic, social, and political success that has come from a minority group has proven to be one of the most important mass immigration forces in Chinese-US relations history. Anti-Chinese hysteria, although still prominent in today’s US culture, was even more deplorable in the 19th and 20th century. Racism and exclusion seemed natural in the US, and the immigration of the Chinese people faced this head-on. The United States has always been called the land of the free, where opportunities prosper and anyone could make a decent living. This is why the Chinese continued to migrate, because they believed their best future could be secured in America. But because of the exclusion era, discrimination, and immigration bans that took place, Chinese were often blocked from equality and citizenship - even in their own country. And because of the government, most Americans supported the inequality of the Chinese, thus forcing them to be seen as a danger to the constitution, welfare, and white labor. The strategies and communities the Chinese adopted for themselves during the exclusion era and onward turned out to be immensely successful.

The United States has the largest ethnic Chinese population outside of Asia. The Chinese are also the largest Asian-origin group in the United States. Large-scale immigration of Chinese began in the middle of the 1800’s, during the First and Second Opium Wars. As a pure stream of immigration came through the states, mostly on the west coast in California and in Hawaii, the Chinese began creating their own communities within larger areas. Most of the Chinese came to these areas as contract workers and to join the mining industry. Later on they came to build and create the Transcontinental Railroad.

The Chinese community was small and isolated for most of the 19th and 20th century, until the exclusion bans were repealed and they were allowed to work beside the Americans. “The documented amount of Chinese fell from 123,000 to 5,000 by the 1960’s -- two decades after American Congress repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943.” New York also became a contender for mass amounts of Chinese immigration, solely because of the influx of Chinatown’s across America. San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City saw the largest amounts of Chinese migrations throughout the 20th century. In other states like Texas, Florida, and Washington, the Chinese populations eventually became some of the biggest in the United States (Figure 1.) The Chinese would make their own ‘settlements’, often having an uncanny resemblance to their hometowns, i.e. ‘Second Chinatown’ and ‘Little Taipei’ found in southern California, where the largest number of Chinese residents currently live.

“As of the 2010 United States Census, there are more than 3.3 million Chinese in the United States, about 1% of the total population. The influx continues, where each year ethnic Chinese people from the People's Republic of China, Taiwan and to a lesser extent Southeast Asia move to the United States, surpassing the Hispanic and Latino immigration.”

This ‘ethnic invasion’ and other anti-immigrant thoughts during the first wave of immigration pushed xenophobia, the fear, hatred, or misunderstanding towards a certain group that is foreign to a typical understanding. Discrimination against Chinese settlements, the jobs they were allowed to work, prostitution, segregation and working for little money paved the way for white labor to overpower the hard work the Chinese were doing in order to make a name for themselves. The prevention of culture assimilation into the mainstream American society was because of the racism they faced by those who were born into western culture and life. And since the Chinese during this wave understood little to no English or societal norms, the culture shock was prevalent in their daily lives. Chinese immigrants immersed themselves in their own groups and relied on ethnic organizations to survive through the growing hatred and banning they were facing in America, a place they had wanted to call home.

In spite of their indispensable role in the development of the American West, the Chinese suffered severe exploitation. They were discriminated against in terms of pay and forced to work under unsafe and unclean conditions. “No variety of anti-European sentiment has ever approached the violent extremes to which anti-Chinese agitation went in the 1870s and 1880s.”

Two of the most important Chinese-American labor forces were the California Gold Rush of 1848-1855 and the construction of the First Transcontinental Railroad in 1863-1869. During the construction of the railroad, the Chinese were perceived as dignified and mostly tolerated by those of the white race. After the Taiping Rebellion of 1850-1864, many Chinese came to America to escape the high rate of poverty the rebellion had casted upon them. “In the early 1850’s there was resistance to the idea of excluding Chinese migrant workers from immigration because they provided essential tax revenue which helped California. China itself was supportive of the exclusion, citing concerns that Chinese immigration to America would lead to a loss of labor for China.” When the mining for gold became less and less towards the middle of the 1850’s, hostility and opposition towards the Chinese began to settle in, along with the many anti-Chinese laws being passed nationally. After being forced to leave the mining industry, the Chinese worked low-wage labor jobs, most often within restaurants and laundry services.

After a slow decline in the desire to hire immigrants for skilled work, the 1870’s brought some of the toughest beginnings for the Chinese. Many Americans were also losing their jobs because of the economic crisis and downfall of workers needed for jobs. The Workingmen’s Party of California was one of the first anti-Chinese movements to take place after this decline. The Workingmen’s Party labor organization and its infamous slogan “The Chinese must go!” was led by labor leader Denis Kearney, who was openly racist and against the Chinese immigration in California, stating that “California must be all American or all Chinese. We are resolved that it shall be American, and are prepared to make it so.” Kearney and a majority of white Californian’s backed this anti-Chinese propaganda, which in turn led to the Exclusion Era and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. It prohibited all immigration of Chinese laborers. It was the second part of the Page Act of 1875, which banned just Chinese women, but the Exclusion Act banned every person of Chinese descent. It was the first law of its kind that banned a specific ethnic group from immigrating to the United States. The Exclusion Act was renewed in 1892 for an additional ten years from the Geary Act, and made permanent in 1902, allowing further negative sentiment against Chinese to rise. “This extension added restrictions by requiring each Chinese resident to register and obtain a certificate of residence. Without a certificate, she or he faced deportation.” Any Chinese who left the United States were unable to simply come back. They had to go through processing and be granted certifications, which could take multiple months up to an entire year. The Exclusion Act also made Chinese immigrants permanent aliens by excluding them from U.S. citizenship.

But The Exclusion Act wasn’t the only anti-Chinese law put in place. Dozens more, like the Immigration Act of 1917, and the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924, both of which condemned even further and stricter laws on ethnic people from all over Asia. According to the U.S. Department of State Office, the purpose of the ladder act was 'to preserve the ideal of U.S. homogeneity.' The enforcements of these two laws were strong, and the white natives had no longer needed to feel threatened by the Chinese, not for the beginning of the 20th century at least. The Anti-Miscegenation Act of 1889 that prohibited Asian men from marrying white women, the Cable Act of 1922 that terminated citizenship for white American women who married Asian men both enforced the misogynistic views towards Asians, and of course the Chinese. The majority of these laws were not fully overturned until the 1950s, at the dawn of the modern Civil Rights Movement.

Following the passing of the Chinese Exclusion Act, a period known as the 'Driving Out' era was born. In this period, anti-Chinese Americans physically forced Chinese communities to flee to other areas because of large scale violence in Western states. After years of anti-Chinese riots, bans from the U.S., and a downfall in the United States that lasted for a prominent thirty years, the American economy suffered a great loss as a result of the Exclusion Act of 1882. Some sources cite the Exclusion Act as a sign of injustice and unfair treatment to the Chinese workers because the jobs they engaged in were mostly menial jobs (Tian, Kelly.) “The Chinese Exclusion Act was implemented during a time of great prejudice and blind racism. America as a whole tends to, in desperate economic times, target minority groups or other certain groups to blame, such as in this case when the Chinamen were credited with depressing wages.”

Into the 20th century, the anti-Chinese was still prevalent in most of the United States under the current jurisdiction and congress. When the second batch of Chinese immigration started, the percentage of Chinese coming to America began to pick up again because of the 1943 Chinese Exclusion Repeal Act, also known as The Magnuson Act. This act allowed Chinese immigration again for the first time since 1882. The ‘Second Wave’ from 1949 into the 1980’s coined its name from World War II, two years after China became an ally for the U.S. This time period was mostly focused on phasing out of exclusion policies and racial laws against Asians. The Magnuson Act relaxed racial and national immigration barriers in the United States and paved yet another road for the non-racial immigration legislation and policies to come in the 1960’s.

On the Chinese side of things, the beginning of the People’s Republic of China and the relations that began to form because of it gave China a new wave of dignity and leadership in the latter half of the 1970’s, and it has continued to grow steadily since. By this time, the Chinese people in the United States were seen as naturalized citizens, where they could obtain nationality as an American citizen. In the 1960’s through the middle of the 1970’s, Chinese immigration to the United States came mainly from Hong Kong (as well as Taiwan), which is why many of the Chinese immigrants at this time were not grouped as Mainland Chinese. The People’s Republic of China removed restrictions on immigration of the newest generation of Chinese people (college students, professionals, business owners) in 1977. Most of them came to the United States in groups and lived together in suburban areas where the population was large and steadily changing. This wave of immigration gave Chinese the ability for self-expression, meaning that they were able to heavily immerse themselves within mainstream American society and achieve somewhat desirable socioeconomic mobility. “In the case of Chinese Americans, we have witnessed trends of upwards social mobility that are predictable under classical assimilation theories. Members of the second or later generations (second wave) are unlikely to live in ethnic enclaves or get involved in immigrant organizations.” Many of the ethnic Chinese immigrants of this time period were bypassing ethnic enclaves to assimilate in newer communities with less Chinese and more citizens of different races, predominately white. From a different aspect, many immigrants from the second wave into the third wave of immigration have begun to organize among other ethnic Asian groups politically, socially, and culturally.

The ‘Third Wave’ of Chinese immigration followed immediately after second. In the 1980’s, “the relationship between Chinese immigrants and American culture is now known to be much more than toleration of each other. Chinese-American culture had, in this period, began to be shaped by the shared culture and traditions in the United States.” Although anti-Chinese sentiment existed throughout the second and third waves, it was never as prominent as when the Chinese exclusion era was taking place. Yet riots, arson, beatings, and racism were not uncommon. But the Chinese tolerated it because being in American meant they were making money. Additionally, Chinese migration to the United States picked up during the Third Wave of migration, when “primarily male manual laborers arrived in the West Coast for agricultural, mining, railroad construction, and other low-skilled jobs.” The United States is the top destination for Chinese immigrants, accounting for 22 percent of the nearly 11 million Chinese living outside of China, according to mid-2015 estimates by the United Nations Population Division (Migration Policy.) The second largest Chinese population is Canada, with almost one million immigrants living there as of 2016. Canada shares many similarities and characteristics with the United States in the times of the exclusion era, migration policies, and fair labor and wages for Asian descendants.

Other than jobs, educational resources are at a high for Chinese immigrants coming to America. During the 19th century, Chinese were hired for harder, unskilled labor for a fraction of what white people were being paid. Now, Chinese tend to be hired for skilled professions, mostly dealing with management, supervising, accounting, and multiple-skilled services within companies. From the third wave and beyond, dating from the 1980’s until the early 2010’s, Chinese immigration has seen an immense power incline in the amount of jobs they have created for their own ethnic group as well as other ethnicities in the United States. The Chinese intake for jobs and interest almost doubles that of other Asian-descendants, like Japanese, Korean, Asian Indians, and Filipinos. The jobs and employment also mimics this. Chinese immigrants have a much higher educational attainment compared to other Asian ethnicities as well as to the overall foreign and U.S. born population. “In 2016, about half of Chinese adults (ages 25 and over) had at least a bachelor’s degree, significantly higher than among immigrants overall and U.S.-born adults.” Post-1965 Chinese immigrants came to America as international college students or skilled labor workers. This is prominent throughout America today, where Chinese international students take up large chunks of the overall student body percentage in colleges and universities across the country. Chinese educational students typically enroll in STEM-related majors and minors, like science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. “Asians in the United States are a highly diverse group that is growing fast not only in size, but in political and economic power as well” (AIC.) They are the fastest growing racial group in the United States and now comprise one out of every twenty people.”

The demographic trends and characteristics of the independent movement of the Chinese have proven to be important for U.S. history. With a steady incline and influx of Asians coming to America to indulge themselves in a culture that has very recently come to belong to everyone has given Asian-Americans a voice after centuries of discrimination. Perhaps most importantly is the sociological implications for understanding ethnic relations in the sense of American history and that of Asian history. Minority groups have always dealt with the upper hand in a less than ideal way. Chinese immigrants were punished for a exclusion crisis they could not prevent. Within the era of exclusion and the racism that latched on to every immigrant in the United States has proven to be senseless, because immigration is important for social and systemic stability. Whatever underlying tensions exist now are simply patterns of history that will retract in time. The Chinese - as well as all Asians - are a reminder of how positively approaching diversity is inherently within each individual.