New immigration was not accepted by most citizens although it brought cheap labor to do undesirable jobs in the U.S. People feared radical influences from foreign extremists; people feared the growing Catholic political influence coming from immigrants enter the United States. The Anti- European Act was founded by the Immigration Restriction League. The IRL was founded by a group of Harvard graduates in 1894. The anti-immigrant group shaped a literacy test as a measure to “keep out ‘undesirable classes’ from southern and eastern Europe” from infiltrating the United States. In 1896, the league created a literacy bill with the support of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts. President Cleveland vetoed the bill, though it eventually passed in 1918. Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion acts of 1882 and 1892, which prohibited Chinese people from entering the U.S. In 1902 Chinese immigration was suspended indefinitely. In 1906, to distract attention from a municipal scandal, officials in San Francisco chose to stir up anti-Japanese feelings. …show more content…
Native-born Americans reacted profoundly and negatively to the arrival of Chinese men in the west. President Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act which stated that the Chinese Americans already settled in America to stay and limited family members of Chinese Americans to immigrate with the correct paperwork. This act was one of the most overwhelming and scrupulous stipulation on free immigration in US history. When the exclusion act expired in 1892, Congress extended it for ten years in the name of a different act. This extension was made permanent in 1902. The new act “added restrictions by requiring each Chinese resident to register and obtain a certificate of
Click here to unlock this and over one million essays
Show MoreEXECUTIVE ORDER 9066 Introduction The Japanese were the first immigrants to come across the Pacific Northwest in 1880s. They came here to America because there was a high demand for immigrant work, the amount of money they paid was so low. Time had pass and the Japanese helped construct the Great Northern, Northern Pacific and more. The Japanese were treated horrible due to their appearance; they cannot buy any land.
Everybody with a Japanese face was being shipped off to concentration camp”(Uchida 26). Ruri’s parents were not allowed to become citizens because they were Japanese. Anyone with a Japanese face was sent to camp. “[T]here was a law that prevented Asian from becoming a citizen” reveals that there is hate towards Asian people. It was clear that Americans did not want Asians coming to America.
Such resistance was shown by the resistance of the Geary Act by the Chinese, The Great Migration, and the resistance of Covenants by the African Americans in the West. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was created in order to stop migration of the Chinese to the United States for ten years, however, instead of decreasing migration more Chinese people migrated (Hernandez, 68). This of course infuriated the white settlers, leaving them to find harsher dehumanizing laws to impose. Ten years later, the Geary Act required all Chinese immigrants to register or to be imprisoned for a year before being deported to China (Hernandez, 64).
Emma Lazarus’s poem suggests that America welcomed “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” (Doc. C) and Document A suggests that America shielded newcomers from anti-immigrant slander; however, the American government was alarmed at the large rates of immigration and also regarded foreigners as burdens. The government passed legislation that severely restricted the numbers of immigrants and made immigration exclusive to certain ethnic groups. In the Emergency Immigration Act, as referenced in Document J, the American government prohibited the numbers of incoming immigrants from exceeding 3% of the total immigrants of that nationality currently in America. To further discourage immigration, the government also required literacy tests, as Document I illustrates, for entry to America. Also, the American government viewed certain immigrant groups deemed as undesirable.
The Chinese immigrants, however, were not the only ones to receive such hate and discrimination. This eventually spread towards Japanese and many other groups of Asian immigrants. However, instead of banning them altogether, the government just segregated them under the San Francisco Segregation order in the year of 1906. However, the Japanese government got involved and spoke out against this treatment. As a result, this would lead to the compromise of the Gentlemen’s agreement.
Chinese-Americans were also not granted U.S. citizenship because they looked of Japanese descent. During WWII America and Japan were not on the best of terms, because of this all Japanese-Americans were considered the enemy. Since the Chinese-Americans looked like the Japanese-Americans, the Chinese-Americans were not granted U.S. citizenship. If a Japanese-American was born in America and had no ties to Japan, they still were not guaranteed citizenship if ¾ of their grandparents came directly from Japan. In Germany, Jews were not allowed to be citizens either.
Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 “was the first significant law restricting immigration into the United States.” Signed by President Chester A. Arthur, this act allowed a 10 year suspension on labor immigration from the Chinese. This act required that any non-laborers who wanted entry into the U.S. must have certification from the Chinese government in order to immigrate. They found that proving to be non-laborers was very difficult because this act excluded the Chinese who were skilled/unskilled laborers and those who were employed in mining.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt made a decision that would change the lives of Japanese-Americans on February 19, 1942, two months following the Japanese bombings on Pearl Harbor. On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the internment of over 110,000 American citizens of Japanese ancestry and resident immigrants from Japan1. Meaning that Japanese-Americans, regardless of their U.S. citizenship, were forced to evacuate their homes and businesses and then proceed to move to remote war relocation and internment camps run by the U.S. Government. The attack on Pearl Harbor had, unfortunately, released a wave of negativity, aggression and blatant racism that some of the Non-Japanese American citizens had been holding in up until the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
The policy was criticized by people and the nation itself and thus introduced the number of acts to control the immigration throughout the country. The number showed that millions of immigrants migrated to the U.S major Eastern cities from Europe which comprised of 80% of the immigrant population. The causes of immigration in those states were fleeing unemployment, food shortages,
Thesis: The Chinese Exclusion Act. A document that was first signed in 1882 by President Chester A. Arthur. This was and still is important because it was the first law that restricted immigration into the United States. This document was signed because Congress was concerned about keeping white “racial purity,” even though the Chinese population consisted of only 0.002 (two thousandths) percent of the whole population.
While settlement houses did emerge to facilitate the assimilation of immigrants into the American culture, it was not able to occur immediately, miraculously, or for all people. The Catholic, Orthodox, and Jewish religions were not welcome amongst the mainly Protestant Americans, and some Americans went so far as to form the American Protective Association, which advocated against the election of Catholics into Congress. There was also the issue that the New Immigrants came from different governmental backgrounds where democracy was a foreign or even unheard of concept. Immigrants did not only bring their baggage across the ocean, but also ideas of socialism and anarchy that greatly worried the
The mid-19th century saw an unprecedented wave of immigrants coming into the country. At its peak, Ellis Island, the main processing station for immigrants, handled an astounding 5,000 people every day. Because of the language and culture barriers faced by each group of people, they often settled amongst themselves. Very quickly, country-specific neighborhoods began popping up throughout New York and the surrounding area. This helped to alleviate the stresses with moving to a new country; however, most immigrants came to the United States penniless and lived in low-income housing as their jobs rarely supported themselves let alone their families.
“The obstacles of the past can become the gateways that lead to new beginnings. ”-Ralph Bloom. Many chinese immigrants fought for their future,lives,and rights. Chinese immigrants were misunderstood because of their culture,looks,clothing styles,etc.
The Asian groups, mainly Chinese, were treated unequally with fewer salaries, restrictions on voting rights and the head tax of immigration which was announced on the Chinese Exclusion Act(1923) in order to prevent them from coming. Furthermore, The Immigrant Action(1910) even
One of this week’s readings focused on Ch. 5, “Caged Birds,” in Professor Lytle Hernandez’s book City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771-1965, and this chapter was particularly interesting because it further explained the development of immigration control in the United States. As a continuation from the last chapter, there was a huge emphasis in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Geary Act of 1892. This essentially prohibited Chinese laborers from immigrating to the United States, as well as eventually requiring these people to comply with regulations. “Caged Birds” encapsulates the events afterwards, as the book heads well into the early-1900’s. The disenfranchisement of immigrants develops towards further exclusivity because “[by] 1917, Congress had banned all Asian immigration to the Unites States and also categorically prohibited all prostitutes, convicts, anarchists, epileptics, ‘lunatics,’ ‘