Entry Denied: Exclusion and The Chinese Community in America, 1882-1943

In 1882, Congress passed a Chinese exclusion law that barred the entry of Chinese laborers for ten years. The Chinese thus became the first people to be restricted from immigrating into the United States on the basis of race. Exclusion was renewed in 1892 and 1902 and finally made permanent in 1904. Only in 1943 did Congress rescind all the Chinese exclusion laws as a gesture of goodwill toward China, an ally of the UNited States during World War II. Entry Denied is a collection of essays on how the Chinese exclusion laws were implemented and how the Chinese , as individuals and as a community in the United States, mobilized to mitigate the restrictions imposed upon them. It is the first book in English to rely on Chinese language sources to explore the exclusion era in Chinese American history. Between 1882 and 1943, only a small number of Chinese belonging to certain "exempted" classes--merchants, students, diplomats, and temporary travelers--could land on American soil. During the period, Chinese repeatedly used the courts to challenge the efforts of immigration officials to deny them entry. Four of the essays in this volume document how the Chinese fared in the courts, while another four trace the impact of exclusion on the social structure of America's Chinatowns. The six decades of the exclusion era were a dark period in Chinese American history: Chinese immigrants suffered greatly as a result of the draconian measures to exclude and deport them. Because we know so little about what actually went on in the Chinese communities in America, these essays represent a pioneering effort to shed light on this unhappy chapter of history. They show that Chinese immigrants were not simply passive victims of injustice but were tenacious fighters who attempted to protect whatever civil rights the courts gave them. (Book jacket).… (more)