During the Republics first century, American law held that all white people had equal rights to the benefits of American civilization. Some distinctions were made between citizens and non-citizens: only citizens had the right to vote, and only a native-born citizen could become president, for example. For white people, however, legal access to American citizenship was virtually unrestricted. Potential immigrants might not be able to afford the passage to the United States, but once they were here, the law (if not necessarily the residents) welcomed them; naturalization was theirs for the asking. The law did not intrude on people’s rights to travel, to change their residence or to decide their own destiny. An important consequence was that whites who arrived on American territory were automatically subject to the protection of the American Constitution and laws.
In his book A Different Mirror Ronald Takaki interprets the full sweep of American history as being dominated by the interactions of immigrant and ethnic groups. European immigration groups were more successful in gaining wealth and higher status than people outside Europe. According to Takaki, several racial legislation acts and immigration of skilled workers from Europe contributed to superiority of European immigrants, namely Anglo-Saxon immigrant groups. Some of the discriminatory legislation acts were the Naturalization Act of 1790, the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Immigration Act.
Naturalization Act of 1790 is a racist act restricting the naturalization of persons of color, reserved citizenship for “Whites only.” (Takaki 9). This piece of legislation affirmed the young nation’s commitment to restricting citizenship to “useful men” from Europe. Only those considered to be the “worthy part of mankind” would be able to acquire citizenship in the United States. The federal government would screen out “vagrants, paupers, and bad men.” Applicants for citizenship were forced to reside in the United States for two years, and they were required to be Caucasians. Excluded from citizenship were Native Americans and persons of color.
Federal legislation to restrict and control immigration in 1882 began with two laws, the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Immigration Act. Chinese laborers began to enter at the time of the California gold rush in 1849. They continued to come over the next several decades, moving into railroad building as well as mining, with some becoming agricultural workers and farmers as well. They were regarded by most Americans as alien, unwilling to adapt to American ways and unwanted. These sentiments led to the adoption of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which totally barred Chinese immigration to the United States for a ten-year period and strengthened the ban against their becoming American citizens (Takaki 200). The Immigration Act of 1882 was an important milestone, although it did not change the flow of immigration very much; rather, it asserted comprehensive federal responsibility for immigration for the first time. It set up a system of state boards, under the Department of the Treasury, to monitor immigration.
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