The Chinese Exclusion
The Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) marked both a pivot in U.S. history and a continuation. It was pivotal in that it ended the traditional U.S. policy of open immigration and began an era of restrictions that culminated in the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, which imposed strict quotas based on racial and ethnic criteria. It was also a continuation of a U.S. tradition of intolerance, an intolerance explicitly grounded in racism and in ethnic and religious bigotry. As both pivot and continuation, Chinese exclusion lays bare many of the most crucial fault lines of post–Civil War America.
What factors contributed to the popularity of anti- Chinese sentiment in the nineteenth century and the eventual abandonment by the United States of its policy of admitting immigrants irrespective of race, nationality, or country of origin?Explain.
LENGTH: Your essay should be 700 words in length, footnotes excluded. You may be 10 percent above (880) or below (720).