What is the Chinese Exclusion Act?
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The Chinese Exclusion Act (formally Immigration Act of 1882) was a U.S. federal law that was the first and only major federal legislation to explicitly suspend immigration for a specific nationality. The basic exclusion law prohibited Chinese labourers—defined as “both skilled and unskilled laborers and Chinese employed in mining”—from entering theUnited States. The passage of the act represented the outcome of years of racial hostility and anti-immigrant agitation by white Americans.
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