Last spring President Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act that the Congress had written. The document stats that Chinese will be sent away from the U.S. for the next ten years. Apparently, our president and our Congress are discriminating against the Chinese, what says that they will not turn on the French or even some of our own states next?
The Act was made because there were too many immigrants, but at the same time we had new areas opening up in the west and people were constantly moving from the east to the west. Also with the railroad, the immigrants can easily be relocated if needed. The Chinese have been extremely helpful; they have risked their lives in the mountains, with little pay, blowing up granite just so we can get a railroad. Why discriminate some of our hardest workers?
Now the few that are still here are not being allowed citizenship and struggle to get jobs. Also, they are paid 15 to 20 percent less money than the Irish workers. The majority of the Americans believe that the Chinese were the ones that took away their jobs, but in fact, it was themselves. They have threatened to go on strike, asked for higher wages, and tried to create an easier working environment and because we asked for higher standards and the Chinese just needed a job and were willing to have bad working environments, the Chinese were given our jobs.
This exclusionary viewpoint has happened before, In 1751 Benjamin Franklin cast out the Germans saying, “These aliens will never adopt our languages or customs, any more than they can acquire our complexion.” He believed that the Germans were going to try to change America to be like Germany and have German customs like how the Congress now believes that the Chinese will take control and overpopulate our country.
The Congress and President need to rethink their ways, the Chinese should not be discriminated, there are other ways to solve this problem. They could make certain states “immigrant states” and they can limit the amount of immigrants coming over so that less jobs are taken by the Chinese.