Between 1870 c.e. and 1900 c.e., 12 million immigrants arrived in the US. This figure included the Chinese, up until 1882 c.e.. The Chinese mostly came between 1849 c.e. and 1882 c.e.. What attracted most of the Chinese to come was the gold rush in California. These immigrants participated in mining for gold as well as jobs that catered to the miners: food services, laundry services, and other specialty services. When things got bad, the competition for jobs jumped. Soon people began to resort to racism, and eventually ended Chinese immigration for almost 100 years.
It is crazy how desperate those people must have been for jobs to wholly stop Chinese immigration. The locals knew that the Chinese worked really hard for next to nothing, and that the people already there possibly could not compete with that. The only solution they saw was to oust the competition.
http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/timeline/riseind/chinimms/
It is interesting yet sad how badly we treated the Chinese over the years. The blatant racism that cam in California was bad enough, but when we passed the Chinese Exclusion Act it was pretty much a "No-Chinese" land.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you on that. I always taught as well that the chinese culture has one of the strongest work ethnic that I have ever seen. I have been watching documentaries about railroad building in canada and america and mostly the chinese people were always involved but least credited for their hard work. And you see them here as well as always happy and nice people that do the jobs no one wants to do and they get little credit and appreciation for there work.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to point out, the anti-Chinese sentiment in this period of time evolves into anti-Asian immigration. For example, the Japanese in San Francisco. In 1905, there was a group called Japanese and Korean Exclusion League, as their name suggests calls for the stop of Japanese and Korean Exclusion. Later down the road, we have the Asia Pacific Bar, also known as Asian Exclusion Act of 1924 which controlled the "undesirables" from the Asia-Pacific Islands.
ReplyDeleteChinese Exclusion was not just the first exclusionary law, but rather just the start of the string of laws that come after that try to restrict Asian-Pacific Islanders from coming. Its just not 'no Chinese,' but it became 'no Japanese, Korean, or Filipino.'