Geary Act - Background

Background

Chinese immigrants came to the U.S. in large numbers during the California Gold Rush and in the 1860s when the Central Pacific Railroad recruited labor to build its portion of the Transcontinental Railroad. Once gold became more scarce and labor more competitive, white hostility to the Chinese (as well as other foreign laborers) intensified in the West. This hostility eventually led to the passage of anti-Chinese immigration laws, such as the paternalistic Page Act of 1875 and the first real blanket immigration restriction law banning all people of a specific nationality, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The Act excluded Chinese "skilled and unskilled laborers and Chinese employed in mining" from entering the country for ten years under penalty of imprisonment and deportation, as well as denying U.S. citizenship to Chinese immigrants. The Act effectively began immigration enforcement at the border because prior to the passage of the Page Act and Chinese Exclusion Act, there existed no trained officials and interpreters, nor the bureaucratic machinery with which to enforce immigration restriction laws or an effort to document and track the movements and familial relationships of immigrants. These types of policies implemented in the Page and Chinese Exclusion Acts have largely been seen as due to what Erika Lee depicts as Government officials’ deep “suspicion Chinese were attempting to enter the country under fraudulent pretenses".