Oriental Exclusion Act Passed
Congress on this day passed the Oriental Exclusion Act, as part of the 1924 Immigration Act.
While the law established a notorious quota system for immigration from Europe and most other parts of the world, it completely barred as “undesirable” all immigration from Japan, China, the Philippines, Siam (now Thailand), French Indo-China (now Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia), Singapore, Korea, Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), Burma, India, Ceylon, and Malysia.
The Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed on December 17, 1943. China was a vital ally of the United States during World War II at that time.
In one of the greatest civil liberties tragedies in American history, Japanese-Americans who lived on the west coas during World War II were removed from the coast and detained in concentration camps (officially known as Relocation Centers) as a result of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 (February 19, 1942), which authorized their removal.
Read: Erik Lee, The Making of Asian America: A History (2015)
Learn more about the Oriental Exclusion Act here.
And about the 1924 Immigration Act here.
Learn more: Margaret Sands Orchowski, Immigration and the American Dream: Battling the Political Hype and Hysteria (2008)
See a timeline on U.S. immigration history here