Chinese Immigration Dbq Essay

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In today’s America, many are well aware that anyone born on American soil is a legal citizen; however, there were some instances where Americans of Chinese descent were not entitled to their rights as citizens. In the Look Tin Sing Case (1884) a man named Look Tin Sing, born in California, was not allowed to reenter the U.S. after his trip to China because he did not have the paperwork required of Chinese immigrants at that time. Even though he was technically an American citizen, officials did not agree and the problem was not solved until it went to court. A similar case was called U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) where Wong Kim Ark was also born in the U.S. but was denied re-entry after returning from his trip to China. As seen in document 2, …show more content…

These White acquaintances had already confirmed that they knew Wong and that he was definitely born in the U.S. but the case was not resolved until the Supreme Court became involved. It is easy to say that one can live an easier life if they simply follow the rule but what happens when one has done everything right but still be wrong? The main pull factor for so many immigrating to America was because of money. The immigrants took on various jobs to make ends meet and one of the more choices was in doing laundry. Chinese-owned laundromats competed with White-owned so naturally, certain laws were passed in an attempt to stop the Chinese from competing with the Whites. The Laundry Ordinance (1873) was passed in the city of San Francisco; it did not allow for laundromats to be in wooden buildings. It is worth mentioning that a majority of the laundromats in San Francisco were in wooden buildings and …show more content…

The Filipinos were not expected to follow the immigration quota that came with the Johnson-Reed Act and were allowed to freely travel to and from America. The Johnson-Reed Act was one more act geared towards immigration and had a goal of regulating how many people from each country were coming into America but did not apply to Filipinos because the Philippines was considered to be part of American territory. Once the Tydings-McDuffie Act was put in action in 1934, the Philippines became independent from American control and was considered its own country, thus it had to start following the immigration quota and immigration to America became more

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