AHC: No Chinese Exclusion Act

Mr.J

Is it possible, with a post-1865 POD, for the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 not to be passed in the US? If so, how much would this change US demographics and culture? Would states like California end up with a plurality of Chinese (or East Asian in general) residents? How would a larger American Chinese diaspora affect politics in China?

Just some idle speculation (I was reading Albion's Seed by Fisher and thinking about alternate US immigration patterns). IIRC, at some point the population of Montana Territory was something like 1/5 Asian and 1/10 African-American, so the possibility of different Western demographics was there.
 

Æsir

A similar statistic to your Montana one that I recall reading is that at some point Idaho was one-third Asian.
 

Mr.J

I did a rough estimation of what immigration patterns might've been like without the Act, and got about 400,000 Chinese-Americans by 1920 (as opposed to OTL's 60,000). Let's say 250,000 of them end up in California - that's a little over 10% of the population at the time. So not as massive as I was saying, but enough for significant cultural changes from OTL.
 

Ariosto

Mr.J said:
I did a rough estimation of what immigration patterns might've been like without the Act, and got about 400,000 Chinese-Americans by 1920 (as opposed to OTL's 60,000). Let's say 250,000 of them end up in California - that's a little over 10% of the population at the time. So not as massive as I was saying, but enough for significant cultural changes from OTL.
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No, that would be closer to 15-17% of the state's population.

And I would double those figures given how the immigration rate was growing exponentially until 1880.
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snerfuplz

No Chinese Exclusion Act means a larger backlash against Asian immigrants. Since California was already Jim Crow esque I assume other states will impose similar laws and force new migrants West. Could make the coast areas whiter as WASPS fleeing immigrants in the East would move toward the areas with smaller immigrant populations
 

Mr.J

snerfuplz said:
No Chinese Exclusion Act means a larger backlash against Asian immigrants. Since California was already Jim Crow esque I assume other states will impose similar laws and force new migrants West. Could make the coast areas whiter as WASPS fleeing immigrants in the East would move toward the areas with smaller immigrant populations
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Huh. You mean that California would have less white in-migration as a knock-on effect? Maybe, though whatever its ethnic makeup, it's still California, and is still going to get lots of Americans moving there in the early 20th century IMO.
 
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