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PEOPLE & ARTS Tuesday 29 May 2018
Film explores Chinese Exclusion Act as US immigration ‘DNA’

By DEEPTI HAJELA
Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — Politi-
cians seizing on immigrants
as an election issue. News-
paper headlines calling for
action. Talk of legislation to
institute a ban.
If viewers of “The Chinese
Exclusion Act” documen-
tary end up with a sense
of deja vu between the
film’s subject, a law from
1882 that barred Chinese
people from coming to the
United States, and current
events, that’s pretty much
the point, according to its
filmmakers.
“The ‘A-Ha!’ for anybody
coming to it ... is oh, there’s
a history to how we have
decided who can come
and when they can come,
who’s a citizen and who’s
not a citizen,” said docu-
mentarian Ric Burns, who
made the film with Li-Shin
Yu. It airs on the PBS televi-
sion series “American Expe-
rience” on Tuesday.
The Chinese Exclusion Act
was America’s first and
only immigration act that
barred people from a spe- In this May 15, 2018 photo, filmmakers Li-Shin Yu, left, and Ric Burns discuss their new PBS documentary “The Chinese Exclusion Act,”
cific country from coming during an interview, Tuesday May 15, 2018, in New York.
to the United States. After Associated Press
its initial enactment for a West Coast, primarily Cali- lead to local laws around dozen Chinese miners were citizens.
10-year period in 1882, it fornia, in the middle part of the West Coast limiting were killed in Oregon. The “The Chinese who came
was regularly renewed and the 19th Century, drawn by their livelihoods as well as documentary also shows here and Chinese Ameri-
then made permanent in the possibilities of the Cali- acts like the federal 1875 how Chinese immigrants cans saw more clearly
1904. It was finally repealed fornia Gold Rush and look- Page Act, which instituted and the next generation what’s best about our sys-
in 1943. ing to escape the unrest in regulations on women at- of Chinese Americans born tem and helped secure it,”
Making the documentary China in the wake of the tempting to come to the in the United States fought Burns said. “Every American
was an eye-opening ex- Opium Wars over the West United States from China back, filing thousands and who is born here assumes
perience for Burns and Yu, forcing China to open to that were onerous enough thousands of lawsuits in the they’re American because
who had never heard of trade. that they were almost com- courts to push back against of something Thomas Jef-
the law and believe most They became targets of pletely excluded. There the limitations of the laws ferson wrote, not that
of the American public prejudice by white miners were also acts of violence, they were living under. Wong Kim Ark took his case
isn’t aware of it either, but and other Californians as like the October 1871 mas- Some of the cases estab- to the Supreme Court.”
should be. gold became more difficult sacre in Los Angeles, when lished principles that Ameri- With immigration a cur-
“This is the DNA of Ameri- to come by, as well as poli- a mob went to Chinatown cans now take for granted rent hot-button issue, Burns
can immigration policy,” ticians appealing to nativist and 18 Chinese immigrants and assume have been and Yu hope the docu-
Burns said. “It is not A story sentiments and those con- were killed, many of them part of the country since mentary gives viewers a
about immigration, it is THE cerned immigrants were lynched. its founding, Burns said. clearer sense of America’s
story about immigration depressing wages. But they When the exclusion act He pointed to the case immigration past, away
and you’re not going to un- were also vital labor in the was passed, it prohibited of Wong Kim Ark, born in from the romanticized no-
derstand any of the other building of the Western most Chinese workers from America to Chinese immi- tion that the country has
aspects of it without under- half of the transcontinen- coming, and preventing grant parents. He was re- always opened its arms to
standing this thing: In 1848, tal railroad, forced to work Chinese already here from turning to the U.S. after a vis- people from other nations,
you got off the boat and for lower pay and in worse ever becoming naturalized it to China and was barred so that issues of today can
disappeared, in 1882 sud- conditions that white work- citizens. from re-entry. His case went be grappled with more ac-
denly there was a racially ers. But the anti-Chinese sen- to the U.S. Supreme Court, curately.
invidious distinction being The documentary shows timent already stoked in and the judges decided Americans are attached
made.” how, even though esti- the U.S. didn’t abate with that he was a citizen be- “to an idea of a kinder,
The documentary, which mates put the Chinese pop- the law, and the docu- cause of being born here, gentler understanding of
Burns and Yu initially started ulation at about 100,000 or mentary shows how acts in accordance with the cit- an American past,” Burns
several years ago, starts so when the overall coun- of violence continued to izenship clause of the 14th said. “That kinder, gentler
several decades before try’s population was about be perpetrated against Amendment, thus clarifying past, if it’s wrong, isn’t go-
the law’s enactment on 50 million, there was a ris- Chinese communities, as in the precedent for birthright ing to help you steer ac-
May 6, 1882. The Chinese ing sentiment that the Chi- the Snake River massacre citizenship, regardless of curately in the present and
had started coming to the nese were a problem. That in 1887, where almost three whether a person’s parents the future.”q