Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882: Election Math, Paper Sons and Angel Island

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

Chinese immigrants began arriving in large numbers around the 1848 California Gold Rush, many fleeing the Punti-Hakka Clan Wars, the Taiping Rebellion and famine in the Pearl River Delta, which is why most early arrivals spoke Taishanese. The Burlingame Treaty of 1868 guaranteed unrestricted migration in exchange for American access to Chinese markets, and Chinese workers built much of the first transcontinental railroad. After the Panic of 1873 they made up nearly a quarter of California's wage earners and became targets of labor leader Dennis Kearney and Governor John Bigler. The 1870 North Adams strike, where a Massachusetts shoe factory brought in 75 Chinese workers, made the issue national, and in the tight 1876 election California offered its electoral votes to whichever party would act. After the Angell Treaty of 1880, President Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, banning laborers for 10 years and barring naturalization; it was made permanent in 1902.

About 10,000 Chinese filed habeas corpus petitions between 1882 and 1905, and United States v. Wong Kim Ark in 1898 secured birthright citizenship. Others came as paper sons, memorizing family histories for interrogations at Angel Island that could run 87 pages. Violence followed, the economy did not recover as promised, and repeal came only in 1943 with the Magnuson Act during the wartime alliance with China. The Senate and House expressed regret in 2011 and 2012.

• The Page Act of 1875 had already largely barred Chinese women from entering the country.
• A 1915 federal court ruling that restaurant owners qualified for merchant visas fueled a boom in Chinese restaurants.
• The 1885 Rock Springs Massacre in Wyoming killed at least 28 Chinese residents, and no one was arrested.
• At Hells Canyon in Oregon in 1887, 34 Chinese miners were ambushed and murdered for their gold.
• The Magnuson Act set a national quota of only 105 Chinese immigrants per year.