Published: May 31, 2024
People from Asian and Pacific Island nations have been trading and settling in North America since the mid-1700s. Filipino traders were the first-known settlers from the Pacific Islands to make their home in Louisiana in the 1760s. By the mid-1800s, large numbers of Chinese laborers working on the trans-continental railroad and prospectors hoping to discover gold immigrated to the United States settling mostly in the West.
As the number of Chinese immigrants grew, so did xenophobic fears and policies from White Americans. For example, the ruling in People v. Hall in 1854 prohibited Asian Americans from testifying against White people. The 1862 Anti-Coolie Act “imposed a tax on Asian Americans who attempted to work in . . . factories” as a way to limit competition with White workers. Anti-Asian sentiments sometimes turned violent. In 1871, nearly 20 Chinese were lynched in Los Angeles. In 1885, Chinese-American miners were attacked by White miners in Rock Springs, Wyoming—28 people were killed and approximately 500 Chinese-Americans were driven from their homes. The following year, a riot in Seattle violently forced all Chinese-Americans to leave the city. Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have had a long and continued struggle for civil and economic rights in the United States.
Within an economics or financial literacy class, the following historical examples provide context to help students understand economic issues that Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders face today:
Notable Events
July 14, 1870
Naturalization Act of 1870
The Naturalization Act “explicitly extended naturalization rights to all ‘aliens of African nativity and to persons of African descent,’ while denying the right to all other groups of non-whites, particularly Asians. This law promoted integration and equality for African Americans, but maintained racial distinctions that denied naturalization rights and access to citizenship to Asian and other non-white immigrants.”
March 1875
The Page Act of 1875
The Page Act “was the product of many political factors, including concerns over involuntary servitude, declining wages in the labor market, prostitution, and popular racist stereotypes about people of Asian descent. The act established three different goals. First, it authorized the use of federal agents at immigration ports to search and question ‘any subject of China, Japan, or any Oriental country’ to determine if that person had come ‘without their free and voluntary consent, for the purpose of holding them to a term of service.’ If agents suspected that the person had come involuntarily to engage in ‘lewd and immoral purposes’ while in the U.S., they could be expelled. Second, it effectively banned the immigration of Chinese women by portraying most of them as arriving in the U.S. solely to work as prostitutes. Finally, the act banned people who had been convicted of felonies in their home country from immigrating to the United States.”
May 6, 1882
Chinese Exclusion Act
The Chinese Exclusion Act “provided an absolute 10-year ban on Chinese laborers immigrating to the United States. For the first time, federal law proscribed entry of an ethnic working group on the premise that it endangered the good order of certain localities."
March 6, 1885
Tape v. Hurley
The “parents of American-born Mamie Tape successfully challenged a principal’s refusal to enroll their daughter and other children of Chinese heritage into the Spring Valley Primary School in San Francisco, California."
May 10, 1886
Yick Wo v. Hopkins
A “city ordinance that laundries in wooden buildings needed permits was invalidly enforced under the Fourteenth Amendment where permits were not granted to Chinese laundry owners who had complied with regulations but were significantly less likely to receive permits, as compared with non-Chinese applicants. Fourteenth Amend[ment] protections are universal in their application, to all persons within the territorial jurisdiction, without regard to any differences of race, of color, or of nationality.”
March 28, 1898
United States v. Wong Kim Ark
This case “established the precedent that any person born in the United States is a citizen by birth (known as birthright citizenship). Wong Kim Ark was born in the United States and traveled regularly to China to visit family. On returning from one trip, immigration officers barred his entry as an excludable Chinese person. Wong asserted his right to enter as a U.S. citizen but was challenged by the Immigration Bureau, which assumed that no Chinese person could hold U.S. citizenship. The Supreme Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment granted birthright citizenship to any person born in the United States, regardless of race or the status of their parents.”
May 3, 1913
Alien Land Law
This law prohibited “Asian immigrants from owning land. California tightened the law further in 1920 and 1923, barring the leasing of land and land ownership by American-born children of Asian immigrant parents or by corporations controlled by Asian immigrants.”
February 5, 1917
Immigration Act of 1917
This “law is best known for its creation of a ‘barred zone’ extending from the Middle East to Southeast Asia from which no persons were allowed to enter the United States.”
February 19, 1942
Japanese Internment, Executive Order 9066
Issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Executive Order 9066 granted authority to the U.S. military to remove and detain Japanese-American West Coast residents. “In the next six months, approximately 122,000 men, women, and children were forcibly moved to ‘assembly centers.’ They were then evacuated to and confined in isolated, fenced, and guarded ‘relocation centers,’ also known as ‘internment camps.’”
December 17, 1943
Repeal of Chinese Exclusion Act
This measure repealed “the discriminatory exclusion laws against Chinese immigrants and . . . establish[ed] an immigration quota for China of around 105 visas per year. As such, the Chinese were both the first to be excluded in the beginning of the era of immigration restriction and the first Asians to gain entry to the United States in the era of liberalization."
December 18, 1944
Korematsu v. United States
“On May 30, 1942, about six months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the FBI arrested [Fred] Korematsu for failure to report to a relocation center. After his arrest, while waiting in jail, he decided to allow the American Civil Liberties Union to represent him and make his case a test case to challenge the constitutionality of the government’s order. Korematsu was tried in federal court in San Francisco, convicted of violating military orders issued under Executive Order 9066, given five years on probation, and sent to an Assembly Center in San Bruno, CA.” “Korematsu’s attorneys appealed the trial court’s decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals, which agreed with the trial court that he had violated military orders. Korematsu asked the Supreme Court of the United States to hear his case. On December 18, 1944, a divided Supreme Court ruled, in a 6–3 decision, that the detention was a ‘military necessity’ not based on race.”
December 1952
Immigration and Nationality (McCarran-Walter) Act
The “Act created symbolic opportunities for Asian immigration, though in reality it continued to discriminate against them. The law repealed the last of the existing measures to exclude Asian immigration, allotted each Asian nation a minimum quota of 100 visas each year, and eliminated laws preventing Asians from becoming naturalized American citizens. Breaking down the ‘Asiatic Barred Zone’ was a step toward improving U.S. relations with Asian nations. At the same time, however, the new law only allotted new Asian quotas based on race, instead of nationality. An individual with one or more Asian parent, born anywhere in the world and possessing the citizenship of any nation, would be counted under the national quota of the Asian nation of his or her ethnicity or against a generic quota for the ‘Asian Pacific Triangle.’ Low quota numbers and a uniquely racial construction for how to apply them ensured that total Asian immigration after 1952 would remain very limited.”
September 8, 1965
Delano Grape Strike
“On September 8, 1965, over 800 Filipino farmworkers affiliated with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) struck ten grape vineyards around Delano. They demanded a raise both in their hourly wages, from $1.25 to $1.40, and in the piece rate (the pay a worker earned for each box of grapes packed).” “But although the harvest ended without the farmworkers achieving their objectives, the struggle was just beginning. What began as a labor dispute in the fields of Delano blossomed into a civil rights struggle, a movement for achieving justice for farmworkers.”
October 3, 1965
Immigration and Nationality (Hart-Celler) Act of 1965
This “law set the main principles for immigration regulation still enforced today. It applied a system of preferences for family reunification (75 percent), employment (20 percent), and refugees (5 percent) and for the first time capped immigration from within the Americas.” The act removed racial immigration quotas.
January 21, 1974
Lau v. Nichols
This case “ruled a school that accepted federal funds and did not provide adequate English courses or other educational benefits to students of Chinese ancestry, who did not speak English, violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”
October 28, 1974
Equal Credit Opportunity Act
This act “prohibits creditors from discriminating against credit applicants on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, age, because an applicant receives income from a public assistance program, or because an applicant has in good faith exercised any right under the Consumer Credit Protection Act.”
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