Climbing Gold Mountain:
Some Highlights of Asian Immigration
to America (From Sucheng Chan, Asian
Americans: An Interpretive History)
1600s Chinese and Filipinos reach Mexico
on ships of the Manila galleon.
1763 Filipinos settle in the Barataria
Bay area of New Orleans and establish
fishing and shrimping villages.
1830s Several Chinese "sugar masters" at
work in Hawaii; Chinese sailors and
peddlers show up in New York.
1848 Gold discovered in California;
Chinese begin to arrive.
1852 First batch of 195 Chinese contract
laborers land in Hawaii.
1858 California passes a law to bar
entry of Chinese and "Mongolians"
1868 U.S. and China sign
Burlingame-Seward Treaty recognizing the
right of their citizens to emigrate.
1870 California passes a law against the
importation of Chinese, Japanese, and
"Mongolian" women for prostitution.
1875 Page Law bars entry of Chinese,
Japanese, and "Mongolian" prostitutes,
felons, and contract laborers.
1882 Chinese Exclusion Law suspends
immigration of laborers for ten years;
amended in 1884 to require a certificate
as the sole permissible evidence for
testimony.
Chinese laundrymen win case in Yick
Wo v. Hopkins, which declares that a law
with unequal impact on different groups is
discriminatory.
1886
1888 Scott Act renders 20,000 Chinese
reentry certificates null and void.
1892 Geary Law renews exclusion of
Chiknese laborers for another ten years
and requires all Chinese to register; Fong
Yue Ting v U.S. upholds constitutionality
of Geary Law.
1894 U.S. circuit court in
Massachusetts declares in In re Saito that
Japanese are ineligible for
naturalization.
1898 Wong Kim Ark v. U.S. decides that
Chinese born in the United States cannot
be stripped of their citizenship.
1903 First batch of Korean workers
arrives in Hawaii.; Filipino students
(pensionados) arrive in the U.S. for
higher education.
1907 Japan and the United States reach
"Gentlemen's Agreement" whereby Japan
stops issuing passports to laborers
desiring to emigrate to the United States.
1917 Immigration Law delineates a
"barred zone" from when no immigrants
(including Asian Indians) can come.
1922 Takao Ozawa v U.S. declares
Japanese ineligible for naturalized
citizenship. Cable Act stipulates that
any American female citizen who marries an
alien ineligible to citizenship would
lose their citizenship.
1924 Immigration Act denies entry to
virtually all Asians.
1934 Tydings-McDuffie Act spells out
procedure for eventual Philippine
independence and reduces Filipino
immigration to fifty persons a year.
1946 Luce-Celler bill confers the right
of naturalization and small immigration
quotas to Asian Indians and Filipinos
1965 Immigration Law resulting from the
Hart-Cellar Act abolishes "national
origins" as a basis for allocating
immigration quotas to various
countries--Asian countries are finally
placed on an equal footing.
1975 More than 130,000 refugees from
Vietnam, Kampuchea, and Laos enter the
United States as Communist governments
come to power in their homelands.
1976 Health Professionals Education
Assistance Act reduces influx of foreign
doctors, nurses, and pharmacists;
President Gerald Ford rescinds Executive
Order 9066.
1979 Resumption of diplomatic relations
between the People's Republic of China and
the United States allows members of
long-separated Chinese American families
to be reunited.
1980 Refugee Act systematizes the
admission of refugees; the government of
the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the
United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees set up an Orderly Departure
Program to enable Vietnamese to emigrate
legally.