The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896 (Oxford History of the United States)

by Richard White

Sen. John F. Miller of California introduced a bill creating a twenty-year prohibition on new Chinese workers entering the country. It passed both houses of Congress in 1882, but the president vetoed it, influenced by railroads and other large employers of the Chinese. The veto badly embarrassed Western Republicans. It produced a League of Deliverance in California, designed to drive the Chinese out by ostracism and boycott if possible, and by force if necessary. When presented with a bill reducing the length of immigration restriction to ten years, the president signed it in May 1882. It banned the immigration of Chinese workers, skilled or unskilled, from all ports and forbade the courts from naturalizing Chinese.