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Chinese Immigration In The 19th Century

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While the two immigration groups discussed are about one and a half centuries apart, the reactions of political figures and the general public are highly similar. In the 19th century, the United States federal government sought to curtail alien labor and immigration through legislative means. In contemporary times, legislators and the executive branch has been seeking to accomplish the same goal through executive and legislative actions. The motivation behind these actions have remained relatively unchanged in both instances.
Reactions to Chinese Immigrants in the Nineteenth Century Prior to the Financial Panic of 1873, the United States largely supported the Chinese influx into the country. In the Burlingame-Seward Treaty of 1868, the United States and China signed a bilateral treaty that allowed for free immigration and expanded business ventures with one another. The treaty was perhaps the first equal treaty between China and a Western state since the Second Opium War. However, the sentiments of mutual …show more content…

These immigrants were perceived to be “stealing” jobs from native White Americans (Lee 2002). These immigrants were portrayed poorly by media at the time through printed newspapers. They were seen as workers who are willing to “monopolize” certain labor markets by working for longer hours and lower wages. In some instances, political cartoons even illustrated Chinese laborers as inhuman; this notion is sometimes referred to as the “Yellow Fear”. As a result, a market economy would naturally prefer those employees. The fear of Chinese immigrants was not purely due to economic reasons. In reality, Chinese workers and culture were seen as invasive and pervasive with contradictions to American values. Therefore, Chinese workers were not only seen as economic opponents, but as an epidemic that can erode away the very fabric of American society (Ryo

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Although sharing identical titles and depicting presumably interchangeable scenes, Thomas Nast and G.F. Keller’s political cartoons, Uncle Sam’s Thanksgiving Dinner, illustrate the East and West coast’s contradictory opinions toward the prevailing issues of immigration and its relation to their differing views of the immigrants’ social status, specifically in regards to the Chinese. Written four years after the conclusion of the Civil War and heavily published in the prominent political magazine, Harper’s Weekly, Nast’s cartoon portrays a simple binary of race consisting of an in-group and out-group, with the Chinese as members of the out-group, in reality but incorporated into the national body in Nast’s idealistic depiction. In contrast, Keller’s image, published eight years later in

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The horrific murder of Vincent Chin suggests that people are ignorant to the fact that numerous ethnic groups exist within the same “race.” They view all Asian Americans as the same race despite there being different ethnic groups, such as Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese. As a result, anti-Japanese sentiment meant discrimination towards all Asian Americans in general because to Whites, they all “looked the same.” Chin was in a club celebrating his upcoming wedding before he was savagely attacked by two white men who accused him of “stealing” their jobs. At this time, due the influx of Japanese immigrants as a result of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, many Whites lost their jobs, especially in the automobile industry.

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The mid-19th century saw an unprecedented wave of immigrants coming into the country. At its peak, Ellis Island, the main processing station for immigrants, handled an astounding 5,000 people every day. Because of the language and culture barriers faced by each group of people, they often settled amongst themselves. Very quickly, country-specific neighborhoods began popping up throughout New York and the surrounding area. This helped to alleviate the stresses with moving to a new country; however, most immigrants came to the United States penniless and lived in low-income housing as their jobs rarely supported themselves let alone their families.

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Many miners passed through this community on their way to work the Gold Mines. The miners faced a reality filled with discrimination as the white miners resented their presence. When finding gold did not pan out, many Chinese immigrants moved on to building railroads, but because they were willing to work much cheaper than others they were often treated harshly for taking the jobs of whites who were trying to support their families but were not willing to work for the same pay. Economic difficulties were not the only reason that ethnic Chinese were looked down upon, the creation of ethnic enclaves including the largely populated China Town in San Francisco, created an image of the Chinese that conflicted with the American culture of the time. In these communities they kept much of their culture from China, they didn’t need to speak English and were isolated from other communities.

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