The post Civil War westward expansion saw the United States grow faster than every before. New and improved technologies such as the telegraph and railway linked the far flung states such as California with the original colonies. This rapid growth brought with it a large surge of immigration, mainly from China, to provide a work force to build the railways and mine raw material from the earth. Early on corporations would bring people from their native countries to the United States for this purpose.
However as the rails were finished and the immigration continued many US citizens found themselves to be out of work and saw the Chinese immigrants as a treat to their livelihood. Many claimed that the immigrants would work for less than any man could reasonably live on and as such jobs were scarce. In direct response to the public outcry against the influx of cheap Chinese labor the Chinese Exclusion Act was signed into law by President Chester A. Arthur on Mary 8, 1882.
The law banned immigration from China for "skilled and unskilled laborers and Chinese employed in mining" as well as denying citizenship for Chinese immigrants in the United States thus creating a permanent alien status. If a Chinese alien left the country they would be denied reentry. This was changed two years later with an amendment that relaxed that rule. The result of the immigration ban was human trafficking as more sought to come to the US. Initially the law was only supposed to last ten years, but it remained in force until is was repealed in 1943 by the Magnuson Act. While the new act allowed Chinese to become citizens; it limited the number allowed to emigrate to 105 per year. It wasn't until the Immigration Act of 1965 that immigration restrictions were normalized and a entry to the United States was granted on a fair basis regardless of country of origin.
-Professor Walter
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