What is the history behind the Chinese exclusion?
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From the time of the U.S. acquisition of California (1848) there had been a large influx of Chinese laborers to the Pacific coast. They were encouraged to emigrate because of the need for cheap labor, and were employed largely in the building of transcontinental railroads. By 1867 there were some 50,000 Chinese in California, most of them manual laborers. Their numbers continued to increase after the conclusion in 1868 of the Burlingame Treaty with China, which guaranteed the right of Chinese immigration; it did not, however, grant the right of naturalization. In the following decades a great deal of anti-Chinese sentiment arose in California, partly because the growing American labor force had to compete with cheap Chinese labor and partly because many Americans were opposed to further immigration by what they considered to be an inferior people. In 1877 anti-Chinese riots occurred in San Francisco, and in the three decades that followed further riots, roundups, and violent expulsions of Chinese immigrants occurred in communities throughout the West.
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