answer:
1876, Senator Aaron A. Sargent of California, anti-Chinese immigration crusader.
No other piece of immigration legislation so specifically singled out a people as did the Chinese
Exclusion Act of 1882, and no other law in its wake has ever done the same. According to
the Act, signed by President Chester A. Arthur, all immigration to the U.S. from China was
banned for ten years, and Chinese residents living in the country were prevented from natu-
ralizing as American citizens. In essence, the Chinese were no longer welcome in the United States.
While the mass exclusion imposed a ban on Chinese immigration to the U.S. for ten years, the Act was
eventually renewed indefinitely, making it impossible for Chinese Americans living in the U.S. to reunite
with their families in China and prohibiting the Chinese from entering the country, a restriction that would
remain steadfastly in place for over half a century until the mid-twentieth century.
During the 1880s, it became increasingly difficult for Chinese Americans in the country to live peace-
fully and without incident. Chinese immigrants who had lived on U.S. soil for years or had become perma-
nent residents were no longer granted the same path to citizenship that others were. They were required to
obtain Section 6 certificates, papers that confirmed their legal status, which they had to carry on them at all
times at risk of deportation. They were allowed to leave and reenter the U.S. only by providing cumbersome
documentation.
Such extreme negativity toward the Chinese had not always been the case, though admittedly, feelings
had always been mixed. When they first immigrated to the U.S. during the Gold Rush (or “Gold Mountain”
as the Chinese called it in 1849), discrimination was prevalent but not yet pervasive. However, the Foreign
Miners’ Tax was established in 1952, which heavily taxed the Chinese despite their paltry income (yet would
provide the state with much of its revenue).1
In 1868, with the signing of the Burlingame Treaty with China, U.S. officials too initially expressed
little nativism, instead welcoming the Chinese and encouraging them to immigrate to America. Around the
same time, the building of the Transcontinental Railroad required massive numbers of workers to perform
hard labor, a need that was fulfilled by the introduction of tens of thousands of Chinese workers who were
