'The Chinese must go!' a look back at America's first major exclusionary immigration law.

• Author: Lee, Erira

ON FRBRUARY 28,1882, Sen. John F. Miller of California intraduced a bill to exclude Chinese immigrant laborers from the country. For two hours, the former Union general presented his case. The Chinese, Miller said, posed an immenent danger, in part because they came from a "degrade and inferior race." Other senators jumped in, calling them "rats," "beasts," and "swine." Oriental civilization, they claimed, was incompatible with the United States and threatened to corrupt the nation.

Chinese immigrants also posed an economic danger to white workers, Miller said, through their "machine-like" ways and "muscles of iron." The U.S. laborer, whether on the farm, the shoe bench, or the factory floor, simply could not compete with these low-paid counterparts. A vote for Chinese exclusion was thus a vote for both American labor and the public good.

There was minimal opposition to the law. Former Radical Republicans, such as Massachusetts Sen. George Frisbie Hoar, decried the act as "old race prejudice" and a crime against "the great doctrine of human equality affirmed in our Declaration of Independence." But most members of both the Senate and the House agreed that the Chinese needed to be stopped. "The gate... must be closed," Rep. Edward Valentine of Nebraska succinctly declared. Just over two months later, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 became law.

Today, as the debate heats up over the economic and security implications of immigration, particularly with regard to Muslims, it's worth looking back at America's first law to single out an immigrant group for exclusion.

'American Manhood vs. Asiatic Coolieism. Which Shall Survive?'

Americans were first introduced to the Chinese through reports from U.S. traders, diplomats, and missionaries, who tended to describe the foreigners as crafty, dishonest heathens. When significant numbers of Chinese immigrants started coming to the country, they were the largest group of nonwhite immigrants to the United States. Almost as soon as they arrived, questions were raised about whether they should be welcomed or expelled.

Demagogues such as Workingmen's Party leader Denis Kearney blamed Chinese laborers for unemployment and low wages, capitalizing on a deep sense of economic insecurity during the depression of the 1870s. Anti-Chinese activists drew on earlier debates over Asian indentured labor in the Caribbean and Latin America, and they charged that the capitalists employing the Chinese were creating a new system of quasi-slavery to degrade U.S. workers. Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, framed the issue with a pamphlet tided Meat vs. Rice--American Manhood vs. Asiatic Coolieism. Which Shall Survive?

Industrialists, meanwhile, praised Chinese immigrants as an ample source of cheap, available labor to build the transcontinental railroad and to help develop the lumber, fishing, mining, and agricultural industries of the West.

Many restrictionist arguments stressed the sexual danger that both Chinese women and men allegedly posed to the country's morals. Chinese prostitutes were accused of causing "moral and racial pollution" through their interracial liaisons; Chinese men were said to lure pure and innocent white women into dens of vice and depravity. The men were also seen as undermining acceptable gender roles by engaging in the "women's work" of cleaning and cooking.

'Filth, Immorality, Diseases, Ruin to White Labor'

Nineteenth century popular culture helped spread these caricatures. One cartoon tided "A Statue for Our Harbor," published in 1881 in the San Francisco-based magazine The Wasp, encapsulated white California's fears about Chinese immigration. It depicted a statue of a grotesque Chinese male coolie in San Francisco Bay mocking New York's Statue of Liberty, then under construction. His ragged robes, rat-tail-like queue, stereotypical facial features, and opium pipe symbolized the supposed unassimilability and immorality of the Chinese. His foot rests on a skull, rats scurrying around the pedestal, as capsized ships languish under a slant-eyed moon. Rays of light emanating from the coolie's head inform readers that the Chinese bring "filth," "immorality," "diseases," and "ruin to white labor."

By the time that cartoon was published, Californians had been trying to regulate Chinese immigration for decades. As early as 1850, the state passed its first anti-Chinese law, in the form of a foreign miner's tax. Although the law was aimed at all foreigners, it was primarily enforced against the Chinese. In 1870, California collected $5 million in taxes from Chinese immigrants alone, an amount that equaled a quarter to half of the state's total revenue.

In 1854, Chinese immigrants were officially granted unequal status when the California Supreme Court ruled that they--along with African Americans and Native Americans--could not give testimony in court cases involving a white person. In support of its decision, the court argued that Chinese immigrants were a "distinct people... whom nature has marked as inferior." In 1855...