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American Presidential Elections

2020 Presidential Election

The upcoming Presidential Election occurs on Tuesday, November 3rd.The first Chinese immigrants arrived in 1820, according to U.S. government records. 325 men are known to have arrived before the 1849 California Gold Rush, which drew the first significant number of laborers from China who mined for gold and performed menial labor. There were 25,000 immigrants by 1852, and 105,465 by 1880, most of whom lived on the West Coast. They formed over a tenth of California's population. Nearly all of the early immigrants were young males with low educational levels from six districts in Guangdong Province.

The Guangdong province experienced extreme floods and famine in the mid-nineteenth century. The instability caused by these events led to mass political unrest in the province in the form of the Taiping Rebellion. Other provinces were similarly afflicted by natural disasters, which prompted many people to migrate to the U.S. These Chinese immigrants were predominantly men. By 1900 only 4,522 of the 89,836 Chinese migrants that lived in the U.S. were women. The lack of women migrants was largely due to the passage of U.S. anti-immigration laws. For example, the Page Law of 1875 prevented the immigration of all women prostitutes from China. This law was used to limit the immigration of all Chinese women, not just prostitutes. Upon arrival to the U.S. Chinese men and women were separated from each other as they awaited hearings on their immigration status, which often took weeks. During this time the women were subjected to lengthy questioning that focused on their family life and origins. Their responses were then cross examined with others from their village, and any discrepancies were used to justify denial of entry. The stress of being separated from family caused many women to fall ill while they waited for a hearing. Some even committed suicide as they feared being denied access to the country. Once they were approved and allowed into the country, Chinese women migrants faced additional challenges. Many were coerced into prostitution, with over 60% of the adult Chinese women living in California in 1870 working in the trade. Some women were lured to the U.S. with the promise of marriage only to become a sex slave. Despite these challenges Chinese women were often drawn to the U.S. in order to reunite with their families. Ninety percent of the Chinese women who immigrated to the US between 1898 and 1908 did so to join their husband or father who already resided in the U.S. Chinese women migrants, similarly to men, immigrated for economic opportunities as well.

In the 1850s, Chinese workers migrated to the United States, first to work in the gold mines, but also to take agricultural jobs, and factory work, especially in the garment industry. Chinese immigrants were particularly instrumental in building railroads in the U.S. west, and as Chinese laborers grew successful in the United States, a number of them became entrepreneurs in their own right. As the numbers of Chinese laborers increased, so did the strength of anti-Chinese attitude among other workers in the U.S. economy. This finally resulted in legislation that aimed to limit future immigration of Chinese workers to the United States, and threatened to sour diplomatic relations between the United States and China through the Chinese Exclusion Act.