Below, please find the overheads for this portion of the unit on immigration.

1790 Naturalization Act limited the right of becoming a naturalized citizen to “free white persons.”  Law is not nullified until 1952.

1849 Chinese immigration began as tens of thousands of Chinese peasants came to US - especially California -  to work in the gold mines and on the railroads.

1850 California’s Foreign Miner’s Tax of $20 per month imposed for all who were not native-born citizens of the US or had become citizens under the Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo.

1854 People v. Hall California Supreme Court ruling overturned murder conviction of a white man convicted on the eyewitness testimony of Chinese workers, finding that “Chinese and other people not white” could not testify in court against whites.

1870s Chinese represented 20% of California’s labor force, although they constituted only .002 percent of the entire US population.

San Francisco’s office of the Cigarmakers’ International Union distributed a circular across the western US that listed manufacturers who employed Chinese, “Which is a great injury to our white working men and women.”  The union asked readers to boycott these firms and began to attach special labels to their products proclaiming “Made by white labor,” or “Made by white men.”

1875 Revised Federal Statutes, Section 2169, Title XXX (immigration) specified that racially, only two types of aliens - persons of white or black descent - were eligible to become American citizens.  All Asian immigrants, being neither white nor black, were classified as “aliens ineligible to citizenship.”

1880 The California legislature prohibited marriage between a white person and a “negro, mulatto, or Mongolian.”

1882 Chinese Exclusion Act explicitly prohibited the naturalization of Chinese immigrants.  The Act was the only American law that prevented immigration and naturalization on the basis of race.  In 1882, 39,500 Chinese immigrated to the US; by 1887, only 10 immigrants arrived.
1880s San Francisco Schools Policy established a separate school for the Chinese.  Sacramento followed the example in 1893.  Policy of segregation did not end until 1905.

Large numbers of young Japanese laborers, together with smaller numbers of Koreans and East Indians, immigrated to the West Coast to replace the Chinese as cheap laborers.

1892 Ellis Island operated as the principal federal immigration station until its closure in 1954. During that time, more than 12 million immigrants were processed through the station which spread over 3 connected islands with numerous structures including a hospital and contagious disease wards. It is estimated that over 40 percent of all citizens can trace their ancestry to those who came through Ellis Island. By the 1920s, the facility was used more for "assembly, detainment, and deporting aliens," and symbolized a closing door. About 2 percent, or 250,000, people who came to America were turned away at Ellis Island.

1905 Asiatic Exclusion League organized by delegates from 67 organizations who met in San Francisco to begin plans to press for legislation to halt all Japanese immigration.  Before the end of the decade, the League began lobbying or an amendment to Constitution that would deny citizenship to American-born Asians.

San Francisco School Board issued a decree that all persons of Asian ancestry must attend segregated schools in Chinatown by stating,  “Our Children should not be placed in any position where their youthful impressions may be affected by association with pupils of the Mongolian race.”

1908 135,000 Japanese had immigrated to the US.

1910 Angel Island opened to enforce immigration laws during the Asian exclusion years. From 1910-1940, Chinese at least 175,000 Asian immigrants were detained and interrogated at Angel Island.  The average stay was 2 weeks; the longest was 2 years.  Thousands were deported.

1913 California Alien Land Law prohibited land ownership for “aliens ineligible for citizenship” - i.e., Asians - and limited their lease of agricultural land to three years.

1919 Oregon’s House and the Senate supported a change to the Fourteenth Amendment that would deny citizenship to American-born children of parents who were barred from citizenship - a group that was exclusively Asian.

Japanese Americans owned some 450,000 acres of California farmland.  While the acreage represented but 1 percent of California’s agricultural land, the crops represented about 10 percent of the value of California’s harvest.

1922  Ozawa v. the United States, 260 U.S. 178. Found that because Asians were neither white nor black, they were ineligible to become citizens.   Ozawa unsuccessfully challenged the constitutionality of the law, arguing that he should be considered as a person, an individual with the moral character necessary to become an American citizen.

Cable Act forced women who married Asian men to relinquish their citizenship. “Any woman who marries an alien ineligible to citizenship shall cease to be a citizen of the United States.”  Repealed in 1936.

1924  Immigration Act prohibited the admission of “aliens ineligible to citizenship” as immigrants.  Halted all Asian immigration to the US, including wives of Asians already in the US.

Thousands of young, single Filipinos - the only Asians not included in the 1924 act - began immigrating to the West Coast to fill the continuing need for cheap labor.

1940 The U.S. Census recorded 126,947 Japanese Americans, 62.7% of whom were citizens by birth. An additional 157,905 lived in the Territory of Hawaii and 263 in the territory of Alaska.

1941  On December 7, US declared war on Japan after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in which 2,300 American soldiers and sailors were killed and 1,200 wounded.

A blanket presidential warrant authorized U.S. Attorney General Francis Biddle to have the FBI arrest a predetermined number of "dangerous enemy aliens," including German, Italian, and Japanese nationals. 737 Japanese Americans arrested by the end of the day.

Dec.11 FBI detained 1370 Japanese Americans classified as "dangerous enemy aliens."

Dec.22 The Agriculture Committee of the L.A. Chamber of Commerce recommended that all Japanese nationals be put under "absolute Federal control."

1942  In January, Japanese American selective service registrants classified as enemy aliens. Many Japanese American soldiers discharged or assigned to menial labor.

Jan.28 The California State Personnel Board voted to bar from all civil service positions, all "descendants of natives with whom the United States [is] at war.” Only enforced against Japanese Americans.

Feb. 4 The U.S. Army established 12 "restricted areas" placing enemy aliens on a 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew and allowing them to travel only to and from work.

Feb.14 Memorandum to War Department submitted by General J.L.   De Witt, designated commander of the Western Defense, recommended mass evacuation of the Japanese.

Feb. 19 Executive Order No. 9066, authorized by President Franklin Roosevelt, permitted the War Department to prescribe Military Areas for Japanese relocation,  to evacuate any or all persons from these areas, and to relocate them in internment camps. The only significant opposition came from the Quakers and the American Civil Liberties Union.

March Executive Order.  Established the War Relocation Authority (WRA), a civilian agency to administer the military evacuation and internment. On March 24, General De Witt issued the first of 108 separate orders moving all persons of Japanese ancestry to the prescribed Military Areas, and prohibiting them from refusing to move or to leave the areas.

Aug. 7 All persons of Japanese ancestry had been removed to internment camps, approximately 120,000 people from California, Oregon, and Washington.

The 442nd Regimental Combat Team was formed, consisting entirely of Asian Americans.  By the wars end, it was one of the most decorated unit in US military history, with its members receiving over 18,000 individual decorations.

June  Hirabayashi vs US.  Gordon Hirabayashi, a senior at the University of Washington, challenged the military evacuation orders and was subsequently arrested, convicted and jailed for violating the evacuation orders and the curfew. Hirabayashi argued that the 1942 evacuation and curfew orders were an unconstitutional delegation of power and that to apply the curfew order only against citizens of Japanese ancestry amounted to a constitutionally prohibited discrimination solely on account of race. Supreme Court upheld the curfew order as a legitimate exercise of government’s power to take steps necessary to prevent espionage and sabotage in an area threatened by Japanese attack.

June 21  Yasui v. U.S.  In late 1942, Minoru Yasui, an Oregon lawyer, was arrested for violation of curfew orders.  His lawyers argued the government's restrictions on Japanese Americans were unconstitutional because they were based upon racial prejudice, not military necessity.  The Supreme Court unanimously ruled the government had the authority to restrict the lives of civilian citizens during wartime.  After spending nine months in solitary confinement, Yasui was released - to an internment camp at Minidoka.

July 18 In Cheyenne, Wyoming, a federal district court convicted 63 men from Heart Mountain internment camp of draft resistance and sentenced them to three years in federal penitentiary.   Also that month, seven leaders of the Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee, along with newspaper editor James Omura, were arrested for conspiracy to encourage draft resistance.

July 29 Federal judge dismissed indictments against 26 Tule Lake draft resisters, declaring "It is shocking... that an American citizen be confined on the ground of disloyalty, and then... be compelled to serve in the armed forces, or be prosecuted for not."

Nov. James Omura acquitted, but the Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee leaders were sentenced to three years imprisonment for conspiracy.  In January 1945, the Court of Appeals reversed the conspiracy convictions of the Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee leaders on technical grounds, but they remained in prison until March, 1946.

Dec.14 Korematsu vs. USdetermined.   In 1942, Fred Korematsu refused to obey evacuation orders. He was arrested, convicted, and jailed.  Upon appeal, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of mass evacuation, concluding:  “Korematsu was not excluded from the Military Area because of hostility to him or his race. He was excluded because we are at war with the Japanese Empire, because the properly constituted military authorities feared an invasion of our West Coast and felt constrained to take proper security  measures, because they decided that the military urgency of the situation demanded that all citizens of Japanese ancestry be segregated from the West Coast temporarily, and finally, because Congress, reposing its confidence in this time of war in our military leaders—as inevitably it must— determined that they should have the power to do just this. There was evidence of disloyalty on the part of some, the military authorities considered that the need for action was great, and time was short. We cannot—by availing ourselves of the calm perspective of hindsight—now say that these actions were unjustified.”

Dec.19 In Ex Parte Mitsuye Endo the US Supreme Court found that Mitsuye Endo could no longer be retained in a relocation center and should immediately “be given her liberty.”  Writing for the majority, Justice Murphy declared: “I am of the view that detention in Relocation Centers of persons of Japanese ancestry regardless of loyalty is not only unauthorized by Congress or the Executive, but is another example of the unconstitutional resort to racism inherent in the entire evacuation program...racial discrimination of this nature bears no reasonable relation to military necessity and is utterly foreign to the ideals and traditions of the American people.” Within 48 hours after the Supreme Court’s decision, the government announced that all mass exclusion orders would be revoked and effective January 2, 1945, at which time the Japanese Americans could go home.

1952 The McCarran-Walter Immigration and Naturalization Act ended racially-based naturalization ban and nullified the 1790 Act.  The Act was amended, “The right of a person to become a naturalized citizen...shall not be denied or abridged because of race or sex or because such person is married.”
1965 Immigration Reform Act of 1965 lifted numerical restrictions against Asian immigrants and set new restriction limits - 120,000 immigrants annually from the Western Hemisphere and 170,000 from other countries.

1970s More than 173,000 Vietnamese immigrated to the US, more than 80 percent of whom were refugees.

1976 President Gerald Ford rescinded Executive Order No. 9066.

1980s The Asian population grew twice as fast as Hispanics and eight times as fast as Blacks in the 1980's. The Chinese community doubled in size to 1.6 million during the 1980's; the number of Filipinos grew by more than 80 percent, to 1.4 million; and the smaller Indian, Korean, and Vietnamese communities each grew more than 125 percent. Between 1980 and 1990, the five Asian sub-groups that grew the most were Hmong (1,631 percent increase); Cambodian (819 percent increase); Pakistani (415 percent increase); Sri Lankan (275 percent increase); and Laotian (213 percent increase).

1983 Report of the Commission of Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians - Personal Justice Denied - concluded that exclusion, expulsion and incarceration were not justified by military necessity; such decisions were based on racial prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.

Federal District Court of San Francisco reversed 1942 con-viction of Fred Korematsu, ruling internment was not justified.

1990 US Census figures indicated that Asian-Americans made up 7.3 million members or 3 percent of the total population - almost a 100 percent increase over 1980 figures. In 1990, median earnings for Asians with four years of college were $34,469 compared to $36,134 for Whites. Japanese-Americans  earned 37 percent more than the median family income for all Americans.  Asian-Americans of Hmong descent earned only 26 percent of the median family income for all Americans.

1998 During a White House Ceremony, President Bill Clinton honored Fred Korematsu for pursuing his plea of innocence for 56 years by presenting him with the Medal of Freedom.

2000  An estimated 11.2 million Asian Americans comprised 4% of the entire US population.  About 160,000 were Hmong, most of whom lived in California, Colorado, and Minnesota. About 600,000 were Vietnamese, almost half of whom lived in California.

May  - House Resolution 371 passed to allow Hmong ex-CIA Special Forces who fought for the US during the Vietnam War an easier time gaining political asylum in the US.  The bill waived the English language requirements for potential Hmong refugees.

June  - The seven surviving members of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team received the nation’s top honor for bravery - the Medal of Honor - at Arlington National Cemetary.