The Chinese Exclusion Act and American Economic Policy
Heather Cox Richardson On May 6, 1882, President Chester Arthur signed into law theChinese Exclusion Act . This hotly contested law was the first in American history to prevent voluntary immigration to the United States. It was also the formal rejection of one of the founding principles of the Republican Party: that the immigration of workers to the U.S. was fundamental to the country’s strength. An 1882 cartoon: "THE ONLY ONE BARRED OUT. Enlightened American Statesman.--"We must draw the line somewhere, you know." Courtesy of the Library of Congress. Chinese immigration to America began with the Gold Rush . Its flood tide in 1849 coincided with the economic catastrophe left in China by the Opium Wars, and young Chinese men came to “Gold Mountain” to earn money to feed their families back home. Chinese miners did well financially in California, but quickly came under fire from native-born Americans, who first passed a “Foreign Miners’ Tax” targeting Chinese ...