No Chinese Exclusion Act?

Title says it all.

Get rid of John Bigler and the rather hypocritical Workingmen's Party, and that's a good start; merely exposing the fact that it's founder was himself an immigrant from Ireland(hence the mention of hypocrisy!), would really do some damage to the pro-exclusion movement's PR, at least to those less bigoted Californians who might otherwise have supported the law for other reasons.

However, though, this gets a little complicated because, to be honest, a good portion of the support for the law wasn't so much of "keep these damned (slur) outta mah country!!!!" type racism, as it was over labor concerns(including, and perhaps especially in California); at least one organization, the Knights of Labor, mainly supported it because they feared that these new immigrants were being used, en masse, by wealthy anti-labor factory barons to drive wedges between the workers and to keep wages depressed.....although what many didn't realize at the time was that, the most strident contempt of Chinese and other immigrants sometimes(not always, true, but more often than some might think.) came from the very same people who opposed expanding labor rights in the first place.

At least one group seems to have recognized this, at least to an extent; the Wobblies. If you can find a way to make them, or at least their interpretation of things, more influential, then that's another dent in the proverbial armor right there.
 
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Isn't it all really racism at the core, the hysteria over fears of the "yellowing" of the West Coast, with the usual suspects as well as the people listed by CaliBoy1990? I refuse to go down the very dirty laundry list of complaints listed by such people. However, it wasn't happening just in Congress. Plenty of racists all over.

Just look at the racist reactions of White neighborhoods in the American interior (THIS IS A WHITE NEIGHBORHOOD/JAPS KEEP MOVING) during the expulsion of the Nisei. Supposedly, they were only supposed to be sent to temporary "relocation centers" prior to being sent to the Midwest or East Coast. Similar to what Ottawa did with their Japanese-Canadians. (1)

Instead, the Nisei were kept in the camps until the Supreme Court in mid-1944 reversed its 1942 decision allowing the camps in the first place.:mad:

Oh, but one thing: If Chinese immigration is much more open, maybe the "China Lobby" really becomes as powerful in such an ATL as many posters like to claim in WWII ATL threads.:rolleyes:

1) Not to say that the Canadian treatment of their Japanese-descended citizens was any better than America's. In fact, it was much worse!
 
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Isn't it all really racism at the core, the "yellowing" of the West Coast, with the usual suspects as well as the people listed by CaliBoy1990? I refuse to go down the very dirty laundry list of complaints listed by such people. However, it wasn't happening just in Congress. Plenty of racists all over.

Just look at the racist reactions of White neighborhoods in the American interior (THIS IS A WHITE NEIGHBORHOOD/JAPS KEEP MOVING) during the expulsion of the Nisei. Supposedly, they were only supposed to be sent to temporary "relocation centers" prior to being sent to the Midwest or East Coast. Similar to what Ottawa did with their Japanese-Canadians. (1)

Instead, the Nisei were kept in the camps until the Supreme Court in mid-1944 reversed its 1942 decision allowing the camps in the first place.:mad:

Oh, but one thing: If Chinese immigration is much more open, maybe the "China Lobby" really becomes as powerful in such an ATL as many posters like to claim in WWII ATL threads.:rolleyes:

1) Not to say that the Canadian treatment of their Japanese-descended citizens was any better than America's. In fact, it was much worse!

I'm not saying that racism wasn't a problem. Not at all. All I was attempting to point out is that the issue was a little more complicated than many today may realize. This honestly does not at all discount the racism and other types of prejudice that did exist and was fairly common at that time(on the street and in Congress.).
 
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