Just finished reading the arduous history of Chinese Americans in Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America (2025) by Micheal Luo. Chinese, we learn, started arriving on the West Coast in the1850s during the California gold rush. They continued to come for the construction of the intercontinental and other railroads after the Civil War. Chinese merchants and service workers followed. They did not all come at the same time or for the same reason, but there was a constant influx of Chinese, and a virulent hostility to them accompanied their arrival.
Today many oppose immigrants who are here illegally. They maintain that the “rule of law” requires that the “illegals” be removed from the country. That was not the reason for opposition to Chinese immigration. The Chinese were not in the United States illegally. Although some Eastern seaboard states tried to restrict Irish immigration, the federal government had placed no restrictions on immigration when the first Chinese influx began. Instead, at the time of our founding and beyond, the country welcomed immigrants. Michael Luo writes: “In the beginning the door was open. The Founding Fathers celebrated the multiplicity of difference in their young republic and recognized that filling the country’s vast, open spaces with newcomers was necessary for securing its future.”
Even so, by the 1840s, many did not want Chinese to be those newcomers. Jobs were a major concern. Today some voice a similar concern that the undocumented take work away from lawful residents. However, few leading the present deportation mania are lining up outside Home Depot for the day labor jobs or clamoring for stooped employment in the lettuce fields. In contrast, in the nineteenth century the hostility to the Chinese was led by whites, often immigrants themselves, who did want jobs in the mines or on the railroads or in the fields, and many of these jobs were held by the Chinese. Whites were not only willing to fight to do difficult and dangerous work, they were also willing to commit atrocities. Luo reports not only about unpunished murders of Chinese but unpunished massacres of them. Not only were Chinese homes and establishments burned without punishment, but time and again whole communities were torched. Luo reports so many atrocities that their recitation, a history that seldom gets reported, becomes mind-numbing.
In addition, the Chinese provoked hostility because they were the “other,” just as many immigrants are viewed today. Some Americans from the beginning had conflicting thoughts about immigration. New residents were necessary for a prosperous country, but immigrants with different customs could warp the country. Even Ben Franklin was concerned about the influx of non-English-speaking Germans into Pennsylvania. Less than a century later, it was easy to see the Chinese as “other” who could never become truly American.
The legal landscape changed for the Asian immigrants after the Civil War. The 1790 Naturalization Act restricted naturalization to “free white persons of good moral character,” a provision which was in effect until well into the twentieth century. Although he does not fully explain how, Luo reports that a few Chinese were naturalized despite this provision, but the law prevented almost every Chinese immigrant from becoming a citizen. However, the Fourteenth Amendment granted citizenship to all those born in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction. In 1898 the Supreme Court held that a child born in the United States to a non-naturalized Chinese immigrant couple was, nevertheless, a citizen. There was now citizenship for few of the Chinese Americans.
But the group of Chinese Americans, citizen or not, remained small because of the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. It prohibited the immigration into the United States of Chinese laborers. For the first time a Chinese immigrant was deemed illegal. Only laborers were excluded, and many seeking entry claimed to be merchants or some other profession that did not require manual labor. Someone had to decide whether the person was excludable under the Exclusion Act, and a new immigration bureaucracy was born. After the Chinese Exclusion Act paved the way, it became easier for the United States to restrict immigration by nationality, restrictions that materialized in the 1920s.
The concern over illegal Chinese immigration widened. The 1790 Naturalization Act stated that children who were born abroad of U.S. citizens were natural-born citizens unless the father had never been an American resident. After the Fourteenth Amendment, the number of Chinese American citizens increased, many of whom returned to China. Chinese, mostly male, started appearing at ports of entry claiming to be citizens as the children of citizens. Government officials often thought that the birth documents showing lineages were fraudulent. The problem of “paper sons” increased after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed birth records. Lengthy, often humiliating detentions, investigations, and interrogations were routine.
The Chinese Exclusion Act remained in effect until World War II when it became an embarrassment since China was an ally in the fight against Japan. Indeed, China had started its war of resistance against Japan in 1937, and Luo reports that 14 to 20 million Chinese were killed in the fighting by World War II’s end.
American immigration laws changed in the 1950s and 1960s, and concern over Chinese immigration morphed into something more modern. With mainland China controlled by Mao, the concern was not about laborers taking jobs away from Americans. Instead, the fear was over communist spies and the stealing of American technology by Chinese students and professionals. A similar rationale fuels many of today’s fears about Chinese immigrants.
On the other hand, many now view Chinese and other Asians as strivers in a traditional American sense, who show that “outsiders” can be successful in the United States. They are a “model minority.” If so, as Strangers in the Land illustrates, that status has been achieved in spite of a tortuous and tortured American history.
