The Chinese Exclusion Act
The United States of America is a typical country that stresses fairer for people. Americans advocate that everyone should be free and equal. They emphasize the basic rights of humans. In the Declaration of Independence, it says people have three unalienable rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Nobody can despoil these rights without suitable reason. But, after a hundred years that the Declaration of Independence was passed, the American government passed a very unfair federal law. It unreasonably deprived these unalienable rights of the group of people who live in America. They lost liberty and were treated unfairly. The act was named The Chinese Exclusion Act.
The Chinese Exclusion Act was signed by Chester A. Arthur on May 6, 1882, following revisions made in 1880 to the Burlingame Treaty of 1868. These laws allowed the U.S. to suspend Chinese immigration, a ban that was intended to last 10 years.
The background of the act
During 1848 to 1865, the first group of Chinese immigrated to America with the California Gold Rush. They continued to immigrate with the large labor projects, such as the First Transcontinental Railroad. At that time, a lot of Chinese immigrated to America. During the early stages of the gold rush, surface gold was abundant, and Americans tolerated the Chinese took the gold. But later, the gold was less and less, the white men began to hate Chinese labors. They said the gold was belonged to Americans. So many Chinese people began to give up mining gold, and they settled in cities, mainly San Francisco. They did basic labor with lower income.
However, the Chinese couldn’t live restfully. With the American economy in decline, the labor leader Denis Kearney and California Governor John Bigler thought Chinese labor caused the economy in decline. But early on, the California government didn’t hope to exclude Chinese worker, they considered the Chinese labors could provide...
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