Chinese Immigration To America

Most people who immigrated to the United States from other countries did it for a common reason: to have a better life. People who came to America from China and Japan were no different. They saw an opportunity to create a better quality of life for themselves and their families and so they made the choice to leave their own countries and begin again in the United States of America.

Chinese immigration to the U.S. took place mostly from 1851-1900. But between 1870 and 1900 nearly 12 million immigrants came to America. A majority of them came to live permanently but some did choose to go back after they had worked in America for a while and made a good savings.

The majority of the Chinese immigrants were single men and they were really interested

The first center of Chinese immigration to America was in San Francisco and it was called Chinatown. Chinatown was also the site of the “Chinese Massacre of 1871.”

Another important piece of the history of Chinese immigration was the Transcontinental Railroad. It was originally called the Pacific Railroad and building it started in 1863. Over 11,000 immigrants worked on the railroad before its competition in 1869. This was just one money making opportunity these immigrants found.

When the economy got hard in the 1870s immigrants began to compete for American’s jobs. This promoted a lot of anti-Chinese riots and even more bad feelings. This resulted in the Chinese Exclusion Act which was passed by Congress in 1882. This act pretty much ended Chinese immigration for a century.

Before 1900 Chinese immigrants worked in farming, mining and building railroads and would send their money back home to their families. But as mentioned before Americans became resentful of the Chinese because they were willing to work for less money. Americans accused the Chinese of taking over the good jobs. Resentment built from

Since 1965 the United States has had open Chinese Immigration.

The start of the greatest period of Japanese immigration to the U.S. was in the 1880’s. However, in 1853 Commodore Matthew Perry of the United State Navy took weapons into the Tokyo Harbor by ship and basically forced the nation to open itself up to trade with the United States. This opened the eyes of the people of China to a whole new world and a new way of doing things that they had never known of.

Some of the earliest Japanese immigrants came here illegally. In 1868 the Hawaiian consul secretly hired and brought over 148 contract laborers.

Between 1886 and 1911 more than 400,000 men and women left Japan for the United States. Over 28,000 of them went to Hawaii. The main reason for this was because the relationship between the different races in Hawaii was better. There were also a lot of Chinese immigrants in Hawaii and they were accepted more freely. Another reason a lot of Japanese people went to Hawaii was their own home was unstable. This move represented a very different way of