I-Search Paper (Chinese Immigrants)

I-Search Paper (Chinese Immigrants)

Part 1: The Search Story

Asian immigrants and their descendants have a long and rich history in the United States, including the Chinese immigrants. I am a Chinese immigrant, so I am very interested in the early history and life of Chinese immigrants in the United States. As I know that most of the early Chinese immigration to the United States can be traced to the mid-1800s.These early Chinese immigrants in the 1850s alone came seeking economic opportunity in America. I know that from Module 3, “By 1880, approximately 400,000 men labored in the railroad industry. Much of the work was dangerous and low-paying and companies relied heavily on immigrant labor. In the late nineteenth-century, Chinese workers provided that labor. By 1880, over 200,000 Chinese migrants lived in the US.” However, they are destined to integrate into the new country, and the new life is full of challenges. Chinese laborers faced discrimination and hostility from white laborers who believed they undercut wages, so, the government limiting the flow Chinese immigration. For example, “The Chinese Exclusion Act”. The Chinese not only do they have to face the problem of survival, poverty and prejudice, but they also struggle for acceptance.

For this topic, I'd like to know more and more information about the reasons why early Chinese immigrated to the United States, what kind of work they did, and how they were treated. The Chinese Exclusion Acts were not repealed until 1943, and then only in the interests of aiding the morale of a wartime ally during World War II.

Part 2: The Search Results

I searched for the information I wanted from Google and looked at dozens of articles with personal opinions. I did a lot of search on Google, but I don't think it worked. So I went back to reading the Module I had learned before. Then, I go back to Google and search. This time, however, I'm going to make it more specific, for example, by including the presence of Chinese immigrants in the United States at a certain time in the search for important information. In this way, It is easier for me to find the useful information I want.

The first source that I found is online , “Essay 4: Immigration, Exclusion, and Resistance, 1800s-1940s”(Erika Lee). As early as 1838, Chinese immigrants came to San Francisco, but it was not until 1850 that a large number of Chinese came here for the same reason that many Americans flocked to California - the gold rush of 1849. I know that from the first source. From this article, first, I know that the first Chinese came to the United States because of the gold rush. Erika said, “ it was the 1848 discovery of gold in Northern California and the resulting California Gold Rush that helped to inaugurate a new era of mass migration from Asia to the United States. The Chinese came first. In 1849, there were 325 Chinese “forty-niners” in California’s gold country.”(lee) Second, at the same time, industrialization and the expansion of American capitalism drove an incessant need for labor in the United State. Railroads created an enormous demand for labor. Much of the work was dangerous and low-paying and companies relied heavily on immigrant labor. In the late nineteenth-century, Chinese workers provided that labor. After the railroad’s completion, migrants either returned to China or went to work in agriculture, mining, building levees, or moved to cities and towns to work in domestic service or manufacturing. We can know some details from Module 3. “The Central Pacific Railroad(CPR) Company president praised the Chinese as “quiet, peaceable, industrious, economical,” and acknowledged that “without them it would be impossible to complete the western portion of this great National highway.”(lee) By 1867, 12,000 Chinese, representing 90 percent of the workforce, were building the railroad. “Many Chinese died during the winter of 1866 when snowstorms covered construction workers and trapped them under snowdrifts. Others lost their lives in explosions while trying to dynamite tunnels through the mountains. One newspaper estimated that at least 1,200 Chinese immigrants died in the building of the railroad.”(lee) Third, I know that immigrants were overwhelmingly young, male laborers who came from the farming and laboring classes in the Pearl River Delta to fill labor shortages on Hawaiian and Caribbean plantations and mines and railways in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. On the Hawaiian Islands, Chinese were heavily recruited to work on sugar plantations. Finally, Chinese workers are discriminated against and hostile by white workers. They think that the wages of Chinese workers are lower than that of white workers, and they took all the job opportunities away. In California, legislators took action to limit Chinese immigration. “The California Workingmen’s Party leader Denis Kearney charged that the Chinese were imported “coolies” engaged in a new system of slavery that degraded American labor”(lee) Beginning in the 1850s and continuing until the end of the 19th century, Chinese were systematically harassed, rounded up, and driven out of cities and towns. They've been treated unfairly, and in the end, in 1882, the United States Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act prohibiting the entry of Chinese laborers into the United States and allowing only select “exempt” classes of Chinese (merchants, students, teachers, travelers, and diplomats) to enter the country.

The second source that I found is online at the library of congress. From the second source, I can know that when Chinese immigrants with hope for a better life came to the United States, they realized that the gold mountain was an illusion. They soon discovered that there were few jobs, that the newcomers could hardly earn enough money to eat, and that what was worse, they found themselves out of touch with their families, without financial resources, unable to pay for their families' voyage from China and unable to return home themselves. In the end, they decided to join into the Central Pacific to build a railroad, a dangerous, low-paid job. But they know it represents an opportunity to enter the US labors market. During and after the rail construction boom, Chinese immigrants found work in a variety of industries, from making shoes and sewing clothes to rolling cigars. Since language barriers and racial discrimination barred them from many established trades, however, they often created opportunities for themselves and launched new businesses. Such as, shops, restaurants, and laundries etc. They worked so hard to adapt to life in the United States, but people in American could not understand how the Chinese could live in such crowded, poor conditions and work so hard for such low wages. As the numbers of Chinese laborers increased, so did the strength of anti-Chinese sentiment among other workers in the American economy. In a series of Anti China movements, the hardships and experiences of Chinese immigrants are unimaginable. In the first decades of their arrival in the United States, they experienced massive racist violence, a campaign of persecution and murder that seems shocking today. Unfortunately, anti-immigration fervor won out. Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which suspended the immigration of Chinese laborers for a period of 10 years and required Chinese people traveling in or out of the United States to carry a certificate identifying his or her status as a laborer, scholar, diplomat or merchant. However, the situation for Chinese immigrants to the American west didn’t reach its nadir until three years later in the Wyoming territory, with the Rock Springs massacre of 1885. " From Seattle to Los Angeles, from Wyoming to the small towns of California, immigrants from China were forced out of business, run out of town, beaten, tortured, lynched, and massacred, usually with little hope of help from the law. Racial hatred, an uncertain economy, and weak government in the new territories all contributed to this climate of terror and bloodshed."

Part 3: Reflecting on Your Research Question

From these materials, I have a deeper understanding of the early Chinese immigrants. At the beginning, With very low wages, and poor working conditions, I don’t see why the Chinese put up with that. But in the process of searching for information, I learned many reasons for Chinese immigration to the United States. Because they are poor, they want to make more money and send it back to their poor families. It was also because of China's economic difficulties and facing wars. They were willing to work for low pay, since even as low as their salary would be, it would still be more than they got paid in China.

In conclusion, in the past 100 years or so, many Chinese immigrants have experienced numerous complications and obstacles in their search for their own homes in the United States. Immigrants often have a stigma or stereotype associated with their race, class or culture. Whenever large numbers of people come to the United States, the United States has not made it "easy.". The experience of Chinese and other ethnic groups over the years has shown that they need to overcome prejudice and hatred through many of their own efforts. Looking back at the difficulties faced by Chinese immigrants in the past century in the United States, would you predict that they will eventually succeed in living in the United States now?

Works Cited

https://www.nps.gov/articles/upload/04-Essay-4-immigration.pdf

https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/immigration/chinese/