Chinese immigrants in the American West
"The initial arrival of Chinese immigrants to the United States began as a slow trickle in the 1820s; barely 650 Chinese immigrants lived in the United States by the end of 1849. But as gold rush fever swept the country, Chinese immigrants—like others—were attracted to the notion of quick fortunes. By 1852, over 25,000 Chinese immigrants had arrived in the United States, and by 1880, over 300,000 Chinese people were living in the United States, most in California.
Although they had dreams of finding gold, many Chinese immigrants instead found employment building the first transcontinental railroad. Some even traveled as far as the South, where they helped farm former cotton plantations after the Civil War.
[Learn more about the people who built the railroads]
Several thousand of these immigrants booked their passage to the United States using what was known as a "credit-ticket," an arrangement in which their passage was paid in advance by US businessmen to whom the immigrants were then indebted for a period of work. Most Chinese immigrants were men; few Chinese women or children traveled to the United States in this time period. As late as 1890, less than five percent of the Chinese population in the United States was female. Regardless of gender, few Chinese immigrants intended to stay permanently in the United States, although many were forced to do so when they realized they lacked the financial resources to return home. Prohibited by law in 1790 from obtaining US citizenship through naturalization, Chinese immigrants faced harsh discrimination and violence from American settlers in the West. Despite hardships like the special tax that Chinese miners had to pay to take part in the Gold Rush and their subsequent forced relocation into Chinese districts, these immigrants continued to arrive in the United States seeking a better life for the families they left behind.
The Chinese community banded together in an effort to create social and cultural centers in cities such as San Francisco. They sought to provide services ranging from social aid to education, places of worship, and health facilities to their fellow Chinese immigrants. But, as Chinese workers began competing with white Americans for jobs in California cities, anti-Chinese discrimination increased. In the 1870s, white Americans formed “anti-coolie clubs”—coolie was a racial slur directed towards people of Asian descent—through which they organized boycotts of Chinese-produced products and lobbied for anti-Chinese laws. Some protests turned violent. In 1885 in Rock Springs, Wyoming, tensions between white and Chinese immigrant miners erupted into a riot, resulting in over two dozen Chinese immigrants being murdered and many more injured.
Racism and discrimination became law. The new California constitution of 1879 denied naturalized Chinese citizens the right to vote or hold state employment. Additionally, in 1882, the US Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which was the first significant law restricting immigration into the United States. It restricted immigration from China for ten years. The ban was later extended on multiple occasions until its repeal in 1943."
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