Why Chinese Immigrants Came to the United States
Chinese immigration to the United States escalated rapidly, so that meant there were many Chinese people, Chinese citizens, immigrating to the United States. So they were moving there for different reasons, but many Chinese Americans came to America primarily to California, usually planning to work in the gold mines, and later to construct railroads. Some also took agricultural jobs and factory work.
So, the gold mine work and the constructing railroads weren’t the only things that Chinese immigrants did once they got here for work. They would also take agriculture jobs and factory jobs, but it was the promise of steady labor in the gold mines and then later constructing the railroads that drew the Chinese immigrants to America in the first place. And they came here hoping to get jobs that would pay them more than they might make in their own country, in an environment that might be safer than what they’re leaving in their old country, and then they would want to bring their families there. So these people came to America planning to stay there, work there, make a new life there.
Why Many US Citizens Opposed Chinese Immigration
Many US citizens disliked the Chinese immigrants because of their different culture and the threat of low wages.
So, the Chinese immigrants were coming from China. They were going to have a different language, different customs, different beliefs, so they had a whole different culture. And the US citizens didn’t always like that clash between the culture they had and this new culture brought in by the Chinese immigrants.
And then more of an actual threat to them was the threat of low wages. So the Chinese immigrants were willing to work for lower pay because it was still more than they were getting, and they were still getting what they considered to be a better life here in America. So they were willing to take lower wages. So if they took lower wages, then that meant that the US citizens would have to also take lower wages or they wouldn’t have a job.
So if the Chinese immigrants came in and took jobs that the US citizens would have otherwise had, the US citizens are either out of work or having to work for lower wages because the Chinese immigrants are willing to work for lower wages. So that was a serious threat to other people working in the gold mines and then on the railroads.
The Development of Chinatown Districts
Chinese people weren’t welcome in most urban neighborhoods. So if there was an empty house on the block, a Chinese immigrant family was not going to be welcome to move into it. So they established what became known as the Chinatown districts in large cities.
So today you probably still hear about Chinatown in large cities, and in these large cities you’ve got a cluster of Chinese people. So these people, some of them may actually still be people that have immigrated directly from China or descendants of Chinese immigrants. A lot of people there still speak their native language. They may speak English as well, but a lot of them still speak some dialect of Chinese. They have Chinese foods, they have Chinese products, something, anything you might be interested in that you could have gotten in China, you might be able to find in the Chinatown district of a large city.
So whenever the Chinese people weren’t welcome in the urban neighborhoods as a whole, they kind of made their own little pocket in the larger cities, and that became their own district, the Chinatown district, and that’s where pretty much all the Chinese people would go and live.
Labor Unions and Political Opposition
Labor unions began to oppose the presence of Chinese laborers in the 1870s, so that threat of low wages had become a reality for a lot of people, and they wanted to just try to stop Chinese immigration. They wanted to get rid of the Chinese laborers because then the wages would have to go up again.
So labor unions got together and got with political leaders and tried to get certain laws passed. As the situation progressed, President Hayes vetoed an attempt by western labor unions, and by western remaining mainly meeting California and the western half of the country, to restrict Chinese immigration, saying that this would be a violation of the Berlin Game Treaty of 1868, which had provided for open Chinese immigration.
The Burlingame Treaty and the Angel Treaty
So the United States and China had the Berlin Game Treaty from 1868. This provided for open Chinese immigration. They could send as many Chinese people over as they wanted. Well, not send them, but as many Chinese people as wanted to come over were welcome to come over to the United States. So as these labor unions started backing political people, pushing for some kind of political action, they started trying to get laws passed that would restrict certain, uh, it would restrict Chinese immigration to some extent or completely, and President Hayes vetoed this attempt by the western labor unions.
However, the Berlin Game Treaty was amended with the Angel Treaty of 1880, which restricted Chinese immigration to some extent, and under this latest treaty, new exclusionary acts were able to be passed.
So President Hayes was able to veto the western labor union’s attempt to start restricting Chinese immigration. He could veto it by saying it would violate the Berlin Game Treaty, but as people in the United States started getting more and more upset about this, he knew he had to do something. He couldn’t just keep going with the Burlingame Treaty, so he sent someone to go talk to the Chinese government, and they came up with a new treaty, which is an amended version of the Burlingame Treaty, and this new treaty was known as the Angel Treaty. And the Angel Treaty did allow the United States to restrict Chinese immigration to some extent.
So under this new treaty, some exclusionary acts were able to be passed. So President Hayes was able to say, “Oh no, no, we can’t pass these laws because it violates the Burlingame Treaty,” but now he didn’t have the Berlin Game Treaty. He had the Angel Treaty, which allowed some restrictive acts. So in 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act put a 10-year moratorium on Chinese immigration, but it did allow some students and businessmen into the country temporarily.
The Chinese Exclusion Act and the Foreign Act
So, the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act said no more Chinese immigrants for the next 10 years. So for 10 years, no Chinese immigrants could come over and just stay here. No one else from China is allowed to come here and just stay permanently and think they’re going to live in America forever.
Now, some students and businessmen were allowed into the country temporarily, but they had to have special papers with them that said what their name was, where they came from, when they were going back, and how long they had access to be there. So it basically was saying what their business was there and when they were getting back out of the country because they weren’t allowed to stay there.
Due to this 10-year ban on Chinese immigration, then in 1885 the Foreign Act prohibited American businessmen from traveling to China to recruit workers.
So even though there was this 10-year ban on Chinese immigration, and a lot of people, especially the lower classes, the laborers, the people in the labor unions, even though a lot of those people disliked the Chinese and they didn’t want any more immigration, there were some people who were very much in favor of Chinese immigration. The people who owned the gold mines or were part of the gold mining business and that whole industry, the people who were part of the railroad industry, the people who were building the railroad, those people loved to have this cheap labor. So they were going to want to go to China and recruit Chinese immigrants to come over.
Now, how they did that, they had to kind of wiggle past the law. So they may have had people come in on a temporary basis and then just kind of smuggle them into a community so that they stayed, or perhaps some of them just kind of stowed away on votes and made their way over. But one way or another, they were recruiting Chinese immigrants to still come over and work.
So even with the Chinese Exclusion Act, there were illegal Chinese immigrants making their way into the country. So to kind of cut down on that, the Foreign Act prohibited American businessmen from going to China and recruiting workers there. So now it was illegal for Americans to go to China and try to recruit people to come back. Um, it pretty much would have been illegal anyway for them to recruit people to come back since there was this moratorium, but this way it actually was spelled out and it said America businessmen can’t do this. It’s against the law for our citizens to go to China and try to bring people back.
The Long-Term Exclusion Policy
The exclusion policy lasted until the 1940s, so this wasn’t something that just went away, and people still had that negative feeling about the Chinese immigrants from whenever they first started coming over and taking these jobs for lower wages. So it took a while before that exclusion policy was lifted.
Immigration from immigrants from China were not allowed to become citizens until 1943 and later. So in 1943, the exclusion policy, the Chinese Exclusion Act, was repealed with a new act, and so in 1943 some people, some Chinese people living in the United States, were allowed to become citizens, but not all of them. Some of them, it took later and different acts to be able to allow these people to become citizens.
United States v. Wong Kim Ark
However, with the Supreme Court case United States versus Wong Kim Arc in 1898, it was decided that the children of Chinese immigrants born in the United States would be full citizens.
So when they read through the US Constitution, it kind of looked like if you were born here, you were a citizen. So in the Supreme Court case United States versus Juan Kim Arc, Wong Kim Ark said, “Hey, I was born in the United States, so I should be a citizen there,” and he won this case. So after 1898, any Chinese immigrants who had children, those children would be full citizens of the United States. Now, their parents, the original Chinese immigrants, would still not be citizens until 1943 or later, when new acts repealed the exclusionary acts and started allowing the Chinese immigrants to become full citizens.
Review
So during the Gilded Age, lots of industrialization, there was a big need for labor, and cheap labor was the best kind of labor for most industries. And so Chinese immigration became a big issue, and from the 1850s to the 1880s lots of Chinese immigrants came over. They took lower wages, and they wanted to stay in America, start their family, bring their family over, have a new life, and they were okay with making less money than most American citizens were because that was still more money than they had had before.
So that willingness to take the lower wages, coupled with their different culture, made most US citizens not like the Chinese people. They tended to join together in what became known as Chinatown districts in urban areas because they weren’t welcome in the pre-established urban neighborhoods.
When labor unions began to oppose the presence of Chinese laborers, President Hayes vetoed the first attempts to pass exclusionary laws, but eventually he sent someone to amend the Berlin Game Treaty, which had kept open immigration, and they came up with the Angel Treaty, which allowed some restriction. Under that, the Chinese Exclusion Act put a 10-year moratorium on Chinese immigration, which meant no more Chinese immigrants for 10 years, though it did allow some students and businessmen to come on a temporary basis. And then in 1889 the Foreign Act prevented or prohibited American businessmen from going to China and trying to recruit Chinese immigrants to come and be workers.
The exclusionary policy toward the Chinese immigrants that came during the Gilded Age continued through the 1940s, and the Chinese immigrants weren’t allowed to become citizens until 1943 and later, though their children, who were born in the United States, were declared to be full citizens after the Supreme Court case from 1898.
So the Gilded Age brought us a lot of Chinese immigrants. It took a long time for the United States to accept these Chinese immigrants as full citizens, but eventually they were taken into the society as a whole as full United States citizens.
