Chinese Exclusion Act Timeline

The competitive political climate of 1876 allowed California politicians to transform opposition to Chinese immigration from a state issue into a national one. Leaders elsewhere increasingly adopted anti-Chinese positions because of electoral politics and labor concerns.

By 1878, Congress felt compelled to consider legislation that would ban immigration from China. The measure was later vetoed by President Rutherford B. Hayes.

California adopted a new constitution that authorized the state government to determine who could reside in the state. It also barred Chinese people from employment by corporations and by state, county, or municipal governments.

The Angell Treaty revised the Burlingame Treaty and allowed the United States to suspend Chinese immigration. It greatly diminished Chinese immigrants' rights and interests and provided the diplomatic basis for later exclusion legislation.

President Chester A. Arthur vetoed a bill proposing a 20-year ban on Chinese laborers, concluding that it breached the renegotiated treaty of 1880. He objected to denying entry but supported a compromise measure.

The 1882 law defined excludable Chinese immigrants broadly as skilled and unskilled laborers and people employed in mining. Because many applicants struggled to prove they were not laborers, very few Chinese people could enter under the act.

President Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act into law on May 6, 1882. The federal law prohibited Chinese laborers from immigrating to the United States for 10 years and became the first major US law to exclude all members of a specific national group.

Amendments made in 1884 tightened the rules governing Chinese immigrants who left the United States and sought to return. They also clarified that the law applied to ethnic Chinese regardless of their country of origin.

The Scott Act expanded the exclusion system by prohibiting Chinese immigrants from reentering the United States after leaving, even when they had previously lived there legally.

In the 1889 Supreme Court exclusion case commonly associated with Chae Chan Ping, the Court declared that the power to exclude foreigners was an incident of national sovereignty belonging to the United States government.

When the original exclusion period expired in 1892, Congress renewed it for another 10 years through the Geary Act. The extension strengthened the exclusion regime and imposed additional documentation requirements.

In United States v. Lem Moon Sing, the Supreme Court upheld restrictions on judicial review of negative immigration decisions, reinforcing the federal government's authority under the exclusion system.

Congress made Chinese exclusion permanent in 1902. The law required each Chinese resident to register and obtain a certificate of residence or face deportation, extending its effects into the 20th century and to Hawaii and the Philippines.

In United States v. Ju Toy, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that port inspectors and the Secretary of Commerce had final authority over who could be admitted to the United States.

The Immigration Act of 1924 further restricted immigration, excluded all classes of Chinese immigrants, and extended restrictions to other Asian immigrant groups. It also established quotas reflecting the gatekeeping ideology associated with earlier exclusion.