In the 19th century, more Chinese workers started coming because the U.S. signed a treaty with China in 1868, and as Pomfret writes: "By the time the treaty was signed, Chinese had been coming to the United States for almost two decades." They soon represented 10 percent of California's population.
Americans welcomed them. Chinese workers drained swamps to produce millions of acres of the richest farmland in the world. The Chinese were miners, laundrymen, cooks, small merchants and railroad workers. They helped build the West. A Republican who owned mines and built railroads told the California State Senate that Chinese workers were "men of iron" and "hardy, industrious laborers."
But once the Civil War ended in 1865, a huge pool of American men headed west to look for jobs. The economy slowed, and Americans turned on the Chinese. At that time, a higher percentage of Chinese were employed than white men, so state laws blocked Chinese entry to the U.S. and prevented those already here from working.
In 1882, President Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred skilled and unskilled Chinese laborers from entering the U.S. for 10 years. It was the first time the U.S. specifically denied entry to a particular ethnic group. [...]
Pomfret describes the strange and complex situation as a "never-ending Buddhist cycle of reincarnation. Both sides experience rapturous enchantment begetting hope, followed by disappointment, repulsion, and disgust, only to return to fascination once again."
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