On May 6, 1882, U.S. President Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred all immigration into the United Stated from China for ten years (h/t Melynda). With subsequent renewals, it remained in effect until 1943. Technically, the law only barred “Chinese laborers,” but it effectively prevented all immigration for reasons I’ll get into below.

Chinese immigration to the western United States began around the time that area became the western United States (as opposed to northern Mexico), in the late 1840’s. The California Gold Rush was a major factor, but the (white) Americans coming to California from the eastern U.S. weren’t necessarily thrilled with them being there, but they were tolerated for some time.

As the Gold Rush wound down, Chinese immigrants and their families settled in cities, especially San Francisco. Many of them took work in restaurants and laundries, and Chinese-Americans played a prominent role as laborers in railroad construction. After the Civil War, however, they made convenient scapegoats for all number of complaints:

American objections to Chinese immigration took many forms, and generally stemmed from economic and cultural tensions, as well as ethnic discrimination. Most Chinese laborers who came to the United States did so in order to send money back to China to support their families there. At the same time, they also had to repay loans to the Chinese merchants who paid their passage to America. These financial pressures left them little choice but to work for whatever wages they could. Non-Chinese laborers often required much higher wages to support their wives and children in the United States, and also generally had a stronger political standing to bargain for higher wages. Therefore many of the non-Chinese workers in the United States came to resent the Chinese laborers, who might squeeze them out of their jobs. Furthermore, as with most immigrant communities, many Chinese settled in their own neighborhoods, and tales spread of Chinatowns as places where large numbers of Chinese men congregated to visit prostitutes, smoke opium, or gamble. Some advocates of anti-Chinese legislation therefore argued that admitting Chinese into the United States lowered the cultural and moral standards of American society. Others used a more overtly racist argument for limiting immigration from East Asia, and expressed concern about the integrity of American racial composition.

The Workingmen’s Party in California, for example, openly advocated for laws prohibiting Chinese immigration, describing Chinese immigrants as “wipped [sic] curs, abject in docility, mean, contemptible and obedient in all things.”

California passed the first state-level Chinese Exclusion Act in 1858, but the state supreme court struck it down in 1862. The state ratified a new constitution (PDF file) in 1879, however, that, in Article II, expressly excluded the following people from voting:

no native of China, no idiot, insane person, or person convicted of any infamous crime, and no person hereafter convicted of the embezzlement or misappropriation of public money

Got that? That covers people who lack the cognitive ability to vote, convicted criminals, and the Chinese.

Article XIX of the 1879 California Constitution was simply titled “Chinese,” and directed the state legislature to use its lawmaking power to protect the state from the “burdens and evils” caused by the presence of Chinese nationals, and to discourage Chinese immigration into the state. It prohibited any corporation formed in California from “employ[ing] directly or indirectly, in any capacity, any Chinese or Mongolian”; and prohibited the employment of Chinese people in “any State, county, municipal, or other public work, except in punishment for crime.” (California has since removed those provisions. Currently, Article XIX deals with motor vehicle revenues, which presumably was not a concern in 1879.)

As the atmosphere in the western U.S. grew more and more tense, Congress passed an exclusion act in 1878, put President Rutherford B. Hayes vetoed it. In 1880, however, the U.S. renegotiated a treaty with China to allow restriction of Chinese immigration, provided the U.S. commit to protecting the rights of Chinese people already in the U.S. This allowed the enactment of the Chinese Exclusion Act two years later.

The law prohibited immigration by “Chinese laborers,” unless they had already been in the U.S. on November 17, 1880. Chinese people who were not “laborers” could come to the U.S. if they produced a certificate from the Chinese government indicating their legal right to do so. This was complicated by the fact that the statute used a very broad—and circular—definition of “Chinese laborer”: “both skilled and unskilled laborers and Chinese employed in mining.” It also prohibited Chinese immigrants from becoming naturalized citizens.

Congress renewed the Chinese Exclusion Act past its original ten-year duration several times, and eventually made it permanent. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed its constitutionality in The Chinese Exclusion Case in 1889, and Congress and state legislatures passed additional laws placing restrictions on Chinese nationals in the U.S. The Chinese Exclusion Act remained in effect until 1943, when Congress passed the Magnuson Act after the U.S. and China became allies in World War II. This law allowed Chinese immigration again, and allowed some Chinese living in the U.S. to apply for naturalization. The number of new visas for Chinese immigrants, however, was limited to 105, which is still more than zero, I guess. Various restrictions on Chinese immigrants remained in effect until Congress effectively repealed them with the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Title 8, Chapter 7 of the United States Code still bears the title “Exclusion of Chinese,” but notes the chapter’s repeal in 1943.

In recent years, courts and legislators have addressed this chapter of our history again:

• H. Res. 683, passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on June 18, 2012, acknowledged regret that “the passage of legislation that adversely affected people of Chinese origin in the United States because of their ethnicity.”
• The California Senate passed Senate Joint Resolution 23 on August 28, 2014, which “request[ed] Congress to adopt resolutions of apology to the Chinese American community for the enactment of the Chinese exclusion laws.”
• The California Supreme Court issued a ruling (PDF file) on March 16, 2015 in In re Hong Yen Chang, posthumously granting the petitioner admission as an attorney in the state of California. Chang immigrated to the U.S. from China in 1872, and graduated from Columbia Law School in 1886. He was initially denied admission to the New York Bar because he was not a citizen, despite having “unanimous recommendation from the bar examiners.” He became “the only regularly admitted Chinese lawyer” in the U.S. in 1888 when the New York Legislature passed a law allowing him to apply again. Chang then moved to California, where aforementioned state laws weighed heavily against him. The state supreme court ruled in 1890 that Chang’s New York naturalization certificate lacked force of law, and therefore denied him admission to the bar. Chang “went on to lead a distinguished career in banking and diplomacy,” but never practiced law again. He died in Berkeley in 1926. His descendants and a group of law students petitioned the court to reconsider, which it did. The court noted that it ruled in 1972 that it was “constitutionally indefensible” to bar non-citizens from the practice of law, and the U.S. Supreme Court issued a similar ruling a year later. In light of these rulings, the repeal of all the laws that stood in the way of Chang’s law license, and the California Senate’s 2014 resolution, the court granted the petition.