Chinese Exclusion Act

U.S. law signed by President Chester A. Arthur on 6 May 1882 banning Chinese laborer immigration for ten years and denying resident Chinese the path to citizenship. The first major U.S. law barring a specific national group, it followed anti-Chinese violence and the 1880 Angell Treaty; renewed in 1892 and made permanent in 1902, it stood until the 1943 repeal.