Chinese Exclusion Act

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Violetta

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What are your thoughts on the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882? This law banned the immigration of Chinese people from the United States. This made Chinese people the only people not allowed to immigrate to the United States. I for one think it's a part of our history that we should not be so proud of. What's your take on this?


Would you like to know more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act

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Violetta said:
What are your thoughts on the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882? This law banned the immigration of Chinese people from the United States. This made Chinese people the only people not allowed to immigrate to the United States. I for one think it's a part of our history that we should not be so proud of. What's your take on this?
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Probably about the same. Many countries have skeletons in their closet, and this is one of ours. The U.S. of the 19th Century had a lot of bigotry before and after the Civil War. I think the U.S. is getting better but still has a fair amount of prejudice.
 
My take on it. A country of immigrants cannot take too many for one source without losing it's character. The railroad brought way too many in in the years before that to be cheap labor.

Case in Point: Texas, Mexican authorities encourages allot of immigration from the US. They allowed it to develop without much interference, then tried to crack down. The result is the State of Texas is now a US state.
 
SerriaFox said:
My take on it. A country of immigrants cannot take too many for one source without losing it's character. The railroad brought way too many in in the years before that to be cheap labor.
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How many Chinese-Americans are there, exactly? Around 3 million? That's only 2/3 of the number of Swedish-Americans, 1/6 of the number of Italian Americans, and 1/12 of the number of Irish-Americans. I can't think that there was more to this than mere culture.
 
A country is well-within its rights to restrict immigration for economic reasons, even though it's almost never actually a good idea, and especially despicable when tainted with any sort of bigotry.
 
To be fair, The Immigration Restriction Act 1901 (Cwn'th) didn't explicitly ban any particular group from Australia, it just required that immigrants be able to complete a short 50 word dictation test in any European language, which was latter adjusted to any language. This doesn't make it markedly different to what was going on elsewhere - I believe America had similar legislation -, only we applied it just about everyone of non-'British' descent. That included Asians - Chinese and Japanese particularly - but also Pacific Islanders and most of Continental Europe - including Greeks, Russians, Italians and Poles for instance. It was also deployed against Communists and Socialists when needed.
 
Violetta said:
I for one think it's a part of our history that we should not be so proud of.
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History? We may not ban Chinese anymore, but we have a similar attitude towards hispanics today (even though we don't ban them outright, we do make it very difficult to come into the country legally).
 
deanej said:
History? We may not ban Chinese anymore, but we have a similar attitude towards hispanics today (even though we don't ban them outright, we do make it very difficult to come into the country legally).
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Assuming "we" is the United States, that's false. No immigration law is geared specifically at Latinos.

There's good reason for a country with social services to the extent that the U.S. to have immigration limits. In order for the aforementioned social services to be sustainable in our economy (which it kind of isn't at this point anyway), they can't be diluted by being expanded into covering more people while the people in question return less productivity than necessary for the status quo.
 
Masada said:
To be fair, The Immigration Restriction Act 1901 (Cwn'th) didn't explicitly ban any particular group from Australia, it just required that immigrants be able to complete a short 50 word dictation test in any European language, which was latter adjusted to any language. This doesn't make it markedly different to what was going on elsewhere - I believe America had similar legislation -, only we applied it just about everyone of non-'British' descent. That included Asians - Chinese and Japanese particularly - but also Pacific Islanders and most of Continental Europe - including Greeks, Russians, Italians and Poles for instance. It was also deployed against Communists and Socialists when needed.
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If we were smart we'd have been keeping out the Poms.

Oh, and what LS said.
 
History? We may not ban Chinese anymore, but we have a similar attitude towards hispanics today (even though we don't ban them outright, we do make it very difficult to come into the country legally).
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That is based on geography, really. There are a lot of relatively poor hispanics with a relatively simple path to the US. If Chinese or Indians, or even Europeans in such numbers in that situation, there would almost certainly be a backlash against them too.

As for the law, it isn't something to be proud of, but definitely not unique to the US. Canada banned most Chinese immigration and enacted drug laws specifically designed to deport the Chinese (including those born in Canada).
 
Lord Baal said:
If we were smart we'd have been keeping out the Poms.
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Yes, Australia dropped the ball on that one...
 
taillesskangaru said:
And for half a century Australia almost exclusively admitted the Poms. The horror!
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$10 pound economic refugee freaking Poms.
 
Violetta said:
This made Chinese people the only people not allowed to immigrate to the United States. I for one think it's a part of our history that we should not be so proud of. What's your take on this?
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I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who thinks this isn't an embarrassment. One of the primary motivations for running out the Chinese is that they were running successful business operations--not just laundry services & brothels, but stores, restaurants, & saloons--that were in competition with those of their Anglo neighbors.

The anti-Yellow hysteria of the 1870s & 1880s was as much about kicking current Chinese residents out as it was about keeping new ones from coming in. It came from the distasteful realization that nonwhite people were doing better in the business sector than the Anglo-Saxon Protestants whom God was known to favor.

Fortunately, we got over that paranoid stage in our history and America never singled out Asian Americans for unfair discriminatory treatment ever again.
 
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