“The Chinese Must Go”: The Chinese Exclusion Act and Its Legacy

By the late 1800s, anti-Chinese sentiment in the United States had reached a breaking point. Chinese immigrants, who had come to build railroads and mine for gold, were now being blamed for economic hardship and job competition. Politicians and labor leaders stirred public anger, and violent attacks on Chinese communities became increasingly common.

In 1882, Congress responded with one of the most blatantly racist laws in U.S. history: the Chinese Exclusion Act. It was the first major federal law to target a specific ethnic group and ban them from immigrating. The law claimed that Chinese laborers posed a threat to the “good order” of certain communities — a vague justification that masked the racial hostility driving it.

The act shut the door on nearly all Chinese immigration for ten years and made it almost impossible for Chinese already in the U.S. to return if they ever left. What’s more, Chinese immigrants were barred from becoming U.S. citizens. It was a legal wall that reinforced the idea that Chinese people would never be fully American.

The effects were immediate and harsh. Chinese communities, already heavily male due to earlier restrictions on women’s immigration, became known as “bachelor societies.” Families were kept apart for decades. Over time, the law was renewed and strengthened. The Geary Act in 1892 extended the exclusion and forced all Chinese residents to carry a special certificate or risk deportation. By 1902, the ban had essentially become permanent.

Despite these barriers, some Chinese immigrants found ways to stay or return — including through the “paper son” system, where people claimed fake family connections to get around immigration restrictions. But for the most part, the community shrank, aged, and was pushed to the margins of American life.

The message from the U.S. government was clear: Chinese people were not welcome here. The Exclusion Act didn’t just limit immigration — it legitimized racism. And although the law was finally repealed in 1943, its impact on Chinese American families and civil rights lasted for generations.

Works Cited

Chang, Iris. The Chinese in America: A Narrative History. Viking, 2003.

Lee, Erika. At America’s Gates: Chinese Immigration During the Exclusion Era, 1882–1943. University of North Carolina Press, 2003.

Ngai, Mae M. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Princeton University Press, 2004.

United States Congress. Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. U.S. Statutes at Large, vol. 22, pp. 58–61.

Pun Chi. “A Remonstrance from the Chinese in California to the Congress of the United States.” 1860. In Asian American Voices, edited by Judy Yung, University of California Press, 2001, pp. 45–48.

Zinn Education Project. “The Chinese Exclusion Act (1882).” Zinn Education Project, 2022, https://www.zinnedproject.org. Accessed May 2025.

Jeffrey Liu