Non Chinese Immigration Essay

After the Civil War, immigrants started to come to the United States as they were engaged by what they have heard by others or what they know about the United States. Between 1870 and 1900, approximately 12 million immigrants arrived to the United States. There were more foreign born people that come to the country in the upcoming 70 years. During the 1870s and 1880s, the majority of people came from Germany, Ireland, and England, which were the main important sources of immigration before the Civil War. However, there were relatively large groups of Chinese that immigrated to the United States between the start of the California gold rush in 1849 and 1882, when federal law stopped their immigration.

In the 1840’s and 1850’s, China was suffering

At the same time, they also had to repay loans to the Chinese merchants who paid their passage to America. These financial pressures left them little choice but to work for whatever wages they could. They would spend their opportunity cost on extra jobs. Non-Chinese laborers often required much higher wages to support their wives and children in the United States, which was unfair to the Chinese immigrant as they work more than the non-Chinese, and also generally had a stronger political standing to bargain for higher wages. Therefore many of the non-Chinese workers in the United States came to resent the Chinese laborers, who might squeeze them out of their jobs. Therefore, as with most immigrant communities, many Chinese settled in their own neighborhoods, and rumors or tales spread of Chinatowns as places where large numbers of Chinese men congregated to visit prostitutes, smoke opium, or gamble. Some advocates of anti-Chinese legislation argued that admitting Chinese into the United States lowered the cultural and moral standards of American society. Others used a more overtly racist argument for limiting immigration from East Asia, and expressed concern about the integrity of American racial composition. This made the Chinese mad as the Non-Chinese were being racist to them when the Chinese barely did anything wrong, they just want to work and give the money to