In response to this pressure, Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1924, which set quotas for immigrants from most nations and excluded both Japanese and Chinese. One provision of the law, sponsored by Hiram Johnson, now a U.S. senator from California, completely prohibited the immigration of foreigners not eligible for citizenship, a provision intended to exclude Japanese who, like other Asians, were legally excluded from naturalization. During the review of the law, Japan`s ambassador sent a note warning of “serious consequences” if the exclusion of the Japanese was enacted. This note aroused strong hostility in Congress, which abruptly rejected all attempts at reconciliation and overwhelmingly accepted the act of exclusion. The Japanese responded by retaliating on July 1, 27, 1924, in Tokyo, celebrated the “Day of Humiliation,” marked by mass “Hate American” rallies. [23] The American experience of Chinese exclusion encouraged subsequent movements to restrict immigration against other “undesirable” groups, such as the Middle East, Hindus and East Indians, and the Japanese with the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924. In this regard, the United States was involved in World War II and tried to improve morale on the national front. In the 1870s, the most vocal opponents of unlimited Chinese immigration were union spokesmen, mainly for economic reasons, but also for racial reasons. After the Supreme Court ruled in 1876 that the federal government was responsible for regulating immigration, Western leaders, especially Denis Kearny, the sogogogic leader of the new California Workingmen`s Party, which briefly prospered on the basis of their one subject: “The Chinese must go!” urged Congress to ban the Chinese, calling for boycotts, claiming that Chinese immigrants undermined the U.S.
wage structure. A Chinese law banning Chinese immigration for ten years was passed in 1882. Immediately afterwards, anti-China unrest in rural areas drove most Asians already settled in California to seek refuge in urban ghettos like the one in San Francisco, which increased the risk of conflict between them and other American workers. Following lobbying by the Knights of Labor and other labor groups, Congress passed the Contract Labor Act in 1885, which prohibited the importation of contract workers into the United States. A new contract with China in 1894 recognized a 10-year period of exclusion from immigration. After China denounced this agreement in 1904, a new exclusion law was passed without a deadline. [4] In 1907-1908, the diplomatic efforts of the Roosevelt administration led to the “gentlemen`s agreement” between the United States and Japan. The essence of the agreement was embodied in a Japanese note of February 24, 1907, in which Japan promised to deprive workers who wanted to emigrate to the United States of passports and the American right to deny entry to Japanese immigrants with passports originally issued to travel to another country. But it wasn`t until February 18, 1908, a Japanese note provided the basis for the effective limitation of immigration….