Assignment 5

Wow! this week was the most informal week so far. I spoke to a lady named Maryanne at the library in Berkley and she gave me tons of primary sources. She even took the liberty of printing them for me. We were discussing the Chinese exclusion act and she pointed out that a new Chinese Exclusion act would be created every ten years. First there was the Chinese Exclusion act of 1882. Followed by the Chinese exclusion act of 1892, and finally the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1902. The Chinese Exclusion act of 1892 was a renewal by the U.S congress of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 suspending the immigration of Chinese laborers to the United States for ten years. It was a violation of an 1880 treaty with China, which allowed the U.S to regulate, limit or suspend immigration but not to prohibit it entirely. In this exclusion act when a Chinese person is convicted and adjudged under any laws to be not lawfully entitled to be or remain in the U.S will be sent to China unless that person can prove to a judge that they are citizens of another country. Furthermore, they can remain in the U.S and be imprisoned for less than a year and then be sent back to their country. If arrested they must prove their lawful right to remain in the U.S. I noticed in Section 6 of the written act they used the word "Chinaman". The sentence goes like so; "Should it appear that said Chinaman had procured a certificate which has been lost or destroyed he shall be detained and judgment suspended a reasonable time to enable him to procure a duplicate from the officer granting it". In a written law for them to use the word Chinaman was really surprising to me but I guess back then people didn't really see it as a bad thing. In the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1902 legislation enacted by the U.S congress on April 29, 1902, that suspended Chinese immigration to the U.S indefinitely. Favored by organized labor, especially within California, it succeeded in the Chinese Exclusion acts of 1882 and 1892. The act was more restricted than previous measures and extended the law to the Philippines and Hawaii and prevented Chinese migration from these islands to the mainland. The 1902 prohibition remained in effect until 1943, when immigration was permitted under a strict quota system.
California was most effected by the coming of Chinese laborers which was one of the reasons why Angel Island was so important during this era. Like I spoke about in my last post, Angel island was a terrible nightmare for Chinese immigrants. Angel island was where they were processed but the living conditions in the island were horrible. The rooms were small, dozens of people would sleep in one room, and some immigrants would be there for years. It wasn't a great system of process but it's what California relied on. It was the perfect place to keep immigrants if you think about it. It's an island close to land but you have to get there on a boat. The immigrants were not on the land of U.S citizens they were on an island miles away from land. Chinese immigrants were detained and interrogated in hopes to deport as many as possible by asking them obscure questions about their villages and family histories in which most of them did not answer correctly. Men and women were housed separately. Detainees spent much of their time in the barracks, languishing between interrogations.The immigrants expressed their fears and frustrations through messages and poems written or carved into barrack walls. Some poems are still visible at the museum today.Immigrants were detained weeks, months, sometimes even years. Word got back to China about the prolonged questioning, so people would try to mentally prepare before even crossing the Pacific Ocean.A 1940 fire destroyed the Angel Island administration building, so the U.S. government abandoned the immigration station.