Chinese Exclusion Act

Virginia SOL 

USII.3    The student will apply history and social science skills to understand how industrialization changed life in rural and urban America after the Civil War by

f.  explaining how governmental actions, including, but not limited to, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, caused harm to Chinese Americans and other immigrants

What is the Chinese Exclusion Act?

“the coming of Chinese laborers to the United States be, and the same is hereby, suspended”


“That any person who shall knowingly bring into or cause to be brought into the United States by land”


“from any vessel of any Chinese person not lawfully entitled to enter the United States, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and shall, on conviction thereof, be fined in a sum not exceeding one thousand dollars, and imprisoned for a term not exceeding one year.”


“That this act shall not apply to diplomatic and other officers of the Chinese Government traveling upon the business of that govern-ment,”


“no State court or court of the United States shall admit Chinese to citizenship”

A Student Exception to Exclusion

Yearbook photo of P.K. Chen.

Pu Kao (P.K.) Chen arrived in the United States under the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship despite the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1921. This scholarship was a form of reparations for the United States to rebuild its relationship with China after the institutional damage against China after the Boxer Rebellion. 

He writes his experience and perceptions of the United States in a 1923 article from the William & Mary Literary Magazine issue called “A Chinese Student’s First Impressions of America.” 

A Religious Exception to Exclusion

Yearbook photo of Margaret Lee Masters.

Entering the U.S. through Angel Island under Exclusion 

Margaret Lee Masters left Hong Kong for the United States with her brother when she was sixteen years old. Due to the Chinese Exclusion Act, her father, a Baptist minister, had to produce two White witnesses who could testify that he did not perform any labor the past year to bring his children to the United States.


The difficulty in entering the United States didn't stop legally but through social discrimination and suspicion. Upon arriving at Angel Island, Margaret had to go through a physical examination and was detained for twenty-three days before her interview. The following remarks are from an interview she did with the Angel Island Immigration Station years later. 

An immigration ticket of young Margaret Lee Masters when first moving to the United States.

“During Margaret’s interrogation she said that the immigration officials tried to trick her by asking confusing questions about her life in China. She remembers being asked, “Where is the piano in your house?” to which she replied, “The dining room.” The officials then informed her that her brother had told them the piano was kept in the living room, to which she replied, “Well, when we eat it’s the dining room, when we don’t eat, it’s the living room.”