Asian Immigration to the United States Essay Example

The Asian Immigration started in 1850, following the discovery of gold America, around 1848, Chinese miners traveled to California in search of wealth. The amount of Asian people, especially Chinese (due to the huge difficulties regarding the economy of the country) who arrived in the USA was massive and those populations who were looking for more hope and opportunities than in China weren't welcome in the USA. Migration can be defined as the process of leaving one country, region or place of residence to settle in another. Migration can be caused by economic, social, political and sometimes ecological unrest. In 1882, the Congress and the president Chester A. Arthur passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first major restriction on immigration to the United States. The law prohibited Chinese workers from entering the United States; it also prohibited them from becoming American citizens for 10 years. These immigration restrictions permanently separated countless Chinese families who would never see each other again. Only some people were allowed to enter the country: select merchants, laborers, diplomats, teachers and students.

In 1910, the Angel Island Immigration Station opened in California's San Francisco Bay, serving as the country's main port of entry for Asian immigrants, where 100,000 Chinese and 70,000 Japanese were processed over the next 30 years. Known as the "Ellis Island of the West" and located 6 miles off the coast of San Francisco, undocumented immigrants were quarantined there for days, even years, in a "prison-like environment." They underwent numerous interrogations during which they had to prove who they were and how they could be useful in the USA. The Chinese were legally prohibited from immigrating to the United States until 1943, during World War II (1939-1945). In this essay, we are going to answer the following question: Why was Asian immigration important in the USA and why is it important to remember.

Firstly, we are going to show why Asian immigrants were and are still important in the USA. Secondly we are going to demonstrate why it is important to remember them and what they went through. Asian immigrants were and still are a really important part of the US population. In the 1850s, Chinese workers migrated to the United States, first to work in the gold mines, but also to take on agricultural and factory jobs, particularly in the garment industry. They came in the US looking for money to send back to their family, still in China. At the end of the Gold Rush, Chinese Americans were considered cheap labor. They easily found employment as farm laborers, gardeners, maids, laundry workers and, most importantly, railroad workers. In the 1860s, Asian immigrants played a particularly important role in the construction of railroads, especially the Transcontinental Railroad. They worked intensely through freezing winters and scorching summers. Hundreds died from explosions, landslides, injuries, and disease. And although they made a major contribution to the construction of the transcontinental railroad, these 15,000 to 20,000 Chinese immigrants have been poorly ignored by history. The question many people are asking these days is: what are the real economic and social impacts of immigration. Many have blamed immigrants, especially from Asia, for either taking away jobs for people already settled in the country or reducing salaries, or both.

According to a recently published study, immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries had a remarkably positive and lasting impact on the places they settled in. Immigration can have significant benefits for economic development, although the impact varies depending on the skill level of the immigrants; migrants can fill labor gaps,  and generate economic growth in destination countries. Many studies proved that immigrants are generally more enterprising than the rest of the population. They are more able to create a company. Also, immigrants rarely hesitate to take a job. They are really present in the food, geriatric, textile and in the young children education industry. They take the jobs that the richer population doesn’t want and that are essentials in a country. In addition, immigrants bring with them their culture, history and knowledge. Most of them have been educated differently than the US population in the 1900s century. They are an asset for a country. To fight the arrival of Asian Immigrants the current president of these times, Chester A. Arthur and the US Congress made a law who encouraged racism and inequality. The law of 1882 was renewed in 1892 by the Geary Act for ten more years, and again renewed in 1902, this time without specifying an expiration date.

Asian Immigration is very important to remember, approximately 13,5 million of Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese suffered leaving their home country, their family and everything they have been attached to, to leave for The USA. Most of these immigrants came to the USA looking for hope, richness, political and economic stability. They came from countries that were going through economic chaos, like in China, where many revolts were raging. To leave their country, immigrants had to take a boat. The trip lasted about 3 whole weeks, with very bad living conditions. In addition, to travel from China to the USA was really expensive, and practically all the immigrants didn’t have a lot of money. But even if the life on the boat wasn’t great, it was hard to imagine how the arrival on some Island in California would be. Most of Chinese immigrants arrived in Angel Island, also known as “the Ellis Island of the West”.  Located in the San Francisco Bay Area in California. It was an immigration Station in which 175,000 Chinese and about 60,000 Japanese immigrants were detained under oppressive conditions, generally from two weeks to six months, before being permitted to enter the United States.  In general, the conditions at Angel Island were not comfortable or sanitary. Men and women were separated from each other, the barracks in which they lived were overcrowded. Due to the unsanitary conditions, disease was common and spread quickly. Similar to those on Ellis Island, immigrants were medically examined upon arrival at Angel Island.

Overall, the immigrants were forced to go through grueling interrogations and examinations.  They could only stay in the United States if they could prove that they had family members who were U.S. residents. If it wasn’t the case, most of them would be deported back in their home country. The majority of the immigrants weren’t English speakers, which would make those intense interrogations even worse. In these conditions, the paper sons and daughters were born. They were immigrants who had to lie about everything, from their history, to their home country, and even their real name. On those Immigration Stations, you could see many monuments like on the Angel Island Immigration Station, those graves, memorials, engraves, most often written in Chinese. These monuments are messages from the past, to show everyone how it was hard for the Asain Immigrants to survive. Those engravings demonstrate the wish to engrave the pain and loneliness. The pain to get a new identity, to forget your real history. The pain that more than a million Asian had been through.  According to historians, the Chinese Immigrants, who began arriving in the United States in large numbers during the California Gold Rush (1848-1855), were deemed too weak for the dangerous and hard work of building the Railroad. The Asian Immigrants arrived in the USA unqualified, they had to do all the work that the white and rich people already living in the country didn’t want to do. But in the 1870s, there was a massive economic depression in America and jobs became scarce. Immediately, Asian Immigrants who had served this country for years suffered. Even as they struggled to find work, Chinese immigrants were also fighting for their lives. In their first decades in the United States, they endured an outbreak of violent racist attacks, a lot of persecution and murder. From Seattle to Los Angeles, from enormous cities to small towns in California, immigrants from China were forced out of business, driven out of town, beaten, tortured, lynched, and slaughtered, usually with little hope of being helped by the law. Racial hate, an uncertain economy, and a weak government in the new territories all contributed to this climate of terror and blood.

In this essay, we showed why Asian Immigration was important and why does it have to be remembered. In 2000, the U.S. Census reported a population of 11.9 million people of Asian descent, or 4.2 percent of the total U.S. population. The Chinese were the first Asian immigrants to come to the United States in significant numbers. Even after 1943 Chinese immigration was still limited to only 105 people per year, until 1965. The absolute number of immigrants to the country increased from less than 2.5 million in 1850 to more than 13.5 million in 1910. Nowadays, Asian people are still immigrating from their country to the US.  The almost 12 million of Asians in the US are still suffering from racism. They brought so much thing in the US, like art, knowledge and culture, and served their new country with pride, as if it was already theirs.