Xin Su

By 1892, measures such as the Geary Act required all Chinese residents in the United States to carry “certificates of residence” or “dog tags,” as the Chinese community tended to call them. When the Chinese Exclusion Act entered its second decade, with the support of the Chinese government and the Six Companies (the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association in San Francisco, California), many Chinese immigrants began organizing to resist the enforcement of the law. The brave efforts of average Chinese Americans turned out to be one of the largest mass civil disobedience movements in US history.

Chinese women in the 19th century were a special group in American Chinese communities. Some of them were babysitters, laundry workers, or gold diggers. This group of people formed the first batch of families in the Chinese community. Prostitution was quite common among many ethnic groups in the western United States, and many Chinese women were also prostitutes. The U.S. legislative system passed the Page Act, prohibiting so-called cheap labor and immoral Asian women from entering the United States. Their excuse for discriminating against Chinese women was their image of prostitution, spreading sexually transmitted diseases, and subverting American marriage ethics. With restrictions on female immigration, the federal government successfully prevented the growth of the Chinese population.

While the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 closed the legal door for immigration, many Chinese switched their tactics by entering the country illegally and they probably became US’ first illegal immigrants. Moreover, these illegal Chinese immigrants who had sneaked into the US through Canada, Mexico, or unguarded shores might have set a precedent for future unlawful immigrants. To prevent the breach of its border by illicit immigrants, the US government hence began to extend its border security to its neighbors such as border diplomacy in Canada and border policing near the border with Mexico. Despite the effective border security in both northern and southern sides, some Chinese managed to take advantage of legal loopholes to acquire admission to the country as legal immigrants or even citizens. In addition, during the third decade after the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act, many Chinese Americans had begun to embrace international politics. Led by the Society to Protect the Emperor (Bao Huang Hui) and the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (Zhong Hua Hui Guan), they called for and donated money to support the boycott of American goods across seas in 1905-06. They also contributed funds to the anti-Manchu revolution and some of them even returned to China to join the uprisings. In 1912, when the Chinese Exclusion Act entered its fourth decade, the last dynasty of the Qing Empire, which lasted thousands of years, finally came to an end.

The Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States federal law signed by President Chester A. Arthur on May 6, 1882 prohibiting the immigration of all Chinese laborers. In times of economic and geopolitical crises, the tensions existed between different ethnic groups and the Chinese Americans paid for the crisis. At the beginning, the law was only a “restriction law” (1882-1888). However, the “restriction law” was ineffective, followed by outbreak of anti-Chinese violence. The confluence of local violence along with national exclusion and international expansion shifted the nature of US border control with a long-term policy of “complete exclusion law” (1888-1943). The hostile political environment lay the grounds for the general public to embrace a racism against Chinese Americans. The Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed in 1943.