The Chinese Exclusion Act was approved on May 6, 1882. It was the first significant law restricting immigration into the United States.
In the spring of 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed by Congress and
signed by President Chester A. Arthur. This act provided an absolute 10-year
moratorium on Chinese labor immigration. For the first time, Federal law proscribed
entry of an ethnic working group on the premise that it endangered the good
order of certain localities.
The Chinese Exclusion Act required the few nonlaborers who sought entry to
obtain certification from the Chinese government that they were qualified to
immigrate. But this group found it increasingly difficult to prove that they
were not laborers because the 1882 act defined excludables as “skilled
and unskilled laborers and Chinese employed in mining.” Thus very few
Chinese could enter the country under the 1882 law.
The 1882 exclusion act also placed new requirements on Chinese who had already
entered the country. If they left the United States, they had to obtain certifications
to re-enter. Congress, moreover, refused State and Federal courts the right
to grant citizenship to Chinese resident aliens, although these courts could
still deport them.
When the exclusion act expired in 1892, Congress extended it for 10 years in
the form of the Geary Act. This extension, made permanent in 1902, added restrictions
by requiring each Chinese resident to register and obtain a certificate of residence.
Without a certificate, she or he faced deportation.
The Geary Act regulated Chinese immigration until the 1920s. With increased
postwar immigration, Congress adopted new means for regulation: quotas and requirements
pertaining to national origin. By this time, anti-Chinese agitation had quieted.
In 1943 Congress repealed all the exclusion acts, leaving a yearly limit of
105 Chinese and gave foreign-born Chinese the right to seek naturalization.
The so-called national origin system, with various modifications, lasted until
Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1965. Effective July 1, 1968, a limit
of 170,000 immigrants from outside the Western Hemisphere could enter the United
States, with a maximum of 20,000 from any one country. Skill and the need for
political asylum determined admission. The Immigration Act of 1990 provided
the most comprehensive change in legal immigration since 1965. The act established
a “flexible” worldwide cap on family-based, employment-based, and
diversity immigrant visas. The act further provides that visas for any single
foreign state in these categories may not exceed 7 percent of the total available.
For more information on Chinese Immigration and the Chinese in the United States,
visit the National
Archives web site.
(Information excerpted from Teaching With Documents: Using Primary Sources
From the National Archives. [Washington, DC: National Archives and Records
Administration, 1989.] pp. 82-85.)
