Chinese Americans

Migration History

The Chinese were the first Asians to come to the United States in large numbers. During the 1800s, many of them came to work as laborers on the transcontinental railroad, in the gold mines of California, or on the plantations of Hawaii. However, when demand for labor decreased in the mainland United States, anti-Chinese sentiment developed and discriminatory state and federal legislation was enacted. Antimiscegenation laws were enacted in 14 states, prohibiting intermarriage between European Americans and Chinese or Mongolians, and the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed by Congress in 1882, restricting Chinese immigration and barring them from U.S. citizenship. Restrictions on Chinese immigration eased after World War II, and eventually the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 (enacted in 1968) gave the Chinese equal status among immigrants from other nations. These policy changes led to a growth in the Chinese American population. In 1950, there were only 0.15 million Chinese Americans. By 1970, their number had tripled to 0.44 million and almost quadrupled to 1.65 million by 1990. Parallel with this growth was the development of a Chinese American middle class consisting of immigrants from white-collar and college-educated backgrounds and U.S.-born Chinese Americans who moved up the socioeconomic ladder.

Places of Origin

The majority of Chinese Americans came from mainland China, Taiwan (an island to which the Nationalist government retreated when the Communists took over the mainland in 1949), and Hong Kong (a former British colony that returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 as a special administrative region with a high degree of autonomy). Chinese Americans also came from other places, such as Macau (a former Portuguese colony that returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1999 as a special administrative region with a high degree of autonomy) and especially Southeast Asia. Among the Southeast Asian refugees who came to the United States in the aftermath of the Vietnam War were many ethnic Chinese, in particular, Vietnamese Chinese who were forced to flee by the new government there.

In recent years, some immigrants from Taiwan have begun to identify themselves as Taiwanese Americans. There are no definite rules for using this term, which has political and social roots and implications. It is used by people born in Taiwan or by people whose families were living in Taiwan before the Nationalist government moved there, as well as by people who have lived there for many generations. Yet others with the same family backgrounds may choose to call themselves Chinese Americans. In the 2000 U.S. Census, approximately 0.12 million people identified themselves as Taiwanese alone compared with approximately 2.31 million people who identified themselves as “Chinese not including Taiwanese.”

...