America was and is known as the land of opportunity for the immigrants. It’s the land that people would kill for to step foot in and achieve their dreams, and this was the reason why the Chinese immigrants had risked their lives for a better future. Despite the obstacles awaiting for them ahead, nothing could turn them around from the journey they were heading. So what motivated them to walk on the road of thorns?
Before answering the question of “why did the Chinese immigrants come to America?”, keep in mind that are three periods of the Chinese immigration. California Gold Rush was the first immigration of the Chinese from 1849-1882, 1882-1965 was after the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed and from 1965 to the present. First, we need to consider their background before they made their one-way trip to America, and what triggered them to tolerate harsh labor conditions. The majority of the Chinese immigrants had the same mindset of striking for a comfortable life through acquiring some fortunes which are golds. Chinese people have been migrating to the U.S. for more than a century to pursue their interest in the economic opportunities, escape political instability and seek better education. There’s a total of four millions chinese living in the U.S today, these numbers started out pretty small at the beginning. The first group of immigrants left because of political corruption and rumors of golden jobs in California. Back in the 1850’s the cities up and down the Pearl River Delta including Guangzhou were hubs for international trade, many people in this area left to pursue better opportunities abroad at the same time the Taiping rebellion and the Opium wars led others to Fleet poverty and instability. Meanwhile, gold was discovered in California and extra hands were needed to build the Transcontinental Railroad, and these forces kicked off the first wave of Chinese immigration, but what started out as job opportunities in America took an ugly turn discrimination and violence. The Chinese immigrants faced many struggles when selling their backs to the sun. The theme of racism was never drilled in their heads, the Chinese equalized themselves with everyone around them and never thought of “being different” or having a native tongue could be a problem to them. We could see it from the other side that the discrimination of the Chinese immigration came from a small psychological effect. Looks are everything, because we judge the person based on their looks. People with unattractive features on their face gives you negative vibes which can change your ways of interacting with them. People who are attractive can easily get away with things and troubles. Unfortunately for the Chinese immigrants back then, this factor made their lives harder for them to survive in a Foreign Country. For Asians, especially most Chinese, have a flatter profile face, their faces don’t contain deep set of eyes and prominent cheekbones. All of these unattractive features add up and made their lives more difficult, because the Americans back then might have viewed them as dangerously invasive species. White laborers felt like Chinese immigrants were threatening their jobs and took extreme measures to get rid of them. They burnt down Chinatowns publicly, lynched Chinese people and passed racially targeted laws. The Chinese immigrants faced many struggles when selling their backs to the sun.Therefore, we ended up with the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first U.S. law restricting immigration based on race. After the act was passed, the Chinese population started to drop until World War two.The second wave of chinese immigration began when Japan invaded China for the second time. The war resulted in the lost of fifteen million Chinese lives and China was in a communist nationalist civil war. China and U.S. became allies to defeat Japan, but the Chinese Exclusion Act was still in place, so the very people who were fighting alongside Americans were not even allowed to come into the country. After World War two, the U.S. realized this irony and repealed the law but mostly for appearance. An immigration quota was set for just one hundred and five Chinese immigrants each year. By 1945 The War Brides Act passed this law allowed spouses and children to join men in the U.S. Before then, the Chinese immigrants were mainly made up of bachelors and from here, the Chinese-American community really started to rise. In this third wave of the chinese immigration, the Chinese immigrants fled from their country because Mao’s policies led to widespread famine and persecution of many people including intellectuals. Life got even more bleak in China in the 1950s and 60s, the Great Leap Forward Mao’s campaigns industrialized the country caused on of the worst famines of the 20th century. Soon after Mao launched a Cultural Revolution, a campaign to purge a country of everyone deemed Western or bourgeois including students, professors and doctors, the revolution was violent and bloody, this changed the makeup of who left China. Those who has the means to and were willing to risk their lives departed. Meanwhile, the civil rights movement was in full swing leading to the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965 officially putting an end to the hundred and five quota and from there, the Chinese population really started to pick up. The majority came from Hong Kong and Taiwan, including some mainland refugees and many came to study in American universities. The Chinese population is now shifted from mainly blue-collar workers to white-collar workers, and the Chinese population doubled from 1950 to 1960. After Mao died, Deng Xiaoping came to power, he was known for opening up the Chinese economy to more free-market principles. By 1990, we started witnessing signs of a growing economy in China, and despite the economic reforms, China’s government remains strict on protests and public dissent. When the Tiananmen Square crackdown happened in 1989, over seventy thousand Chinese students got permanent residency in the United States. In the following year, the U.S. introduced the EB-5 Visa, something that allowed rich foreigners to essentially buy permanent residency with half a million to a million dollar worth of business investment. This program wasn’t that popular in its first eighteen years but that really started to change as China’s economy skyrocketed. Whatever left takes us to today’s immigration, the immigrants are now wealthier than they have been in the past most believe are looking to pursue business opportunities, live in a better environment (clean food, cleaner air and water) and get an education in America. China’s economy has really elevated off in the last twenty years. By 2010, their poverty rate decreased down to twelve percent from nearly ninety percent in 1981 that happened in less than forty years and this completely who wanted to immigrate to the United States. Compared to 90s, Chinese slowed down at the turn of the century. The economy boom in China created more opportunities at home. In conclusion for this argument of why the chinese came to America, we are clear now that the Chinese came to America because of better opportunities economically, politically and socially. They faced many discriminations working in America but kept living on, because they were assured about a successful and thrived future. On the downside, the outcome of this event changed the Chinese’s traditional beauty so much that the original beauty trend has been erased. Since then, big-round eyes, high bridged-nose, thin body type, blond hair and pale skin are considered attractive in China and other Asian countries.