When America BANNED an Entire Nationality

America once passed a law that banned an entire nationality from setting foot in the country.

In the 1800s, tens of thousands of Chinese immigrants helped build the American West, mining for gold and laying the brutal, final miles of the transcontinental railroad.

But as the economy soured, politicians and labor unions blamed them for stealing jobs and driving down wages. The resentment boiled over into national policy, and in 1882, President Chester Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act.

It was the first federal law in American history to bar a specific ethnic group by name. Chinese laborers were forbidden from entering, and those already living here were denied the right to ever become citizens.

The ban was supposed to last ten years. Instead it was renewed again and again, standing for more than sixty years, until it was finally repealed in 1943.

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