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Our Asian-American Heritage

A bittersweet heritage born of colonial exploitation. Carried across time on the backs of thousands of coolies, the Asian-American heritage persevered. Held down by exclusionary and unjust laws for a full century, it can now bloom in full. Asian-Pacific Heritage Week proclaimed in 1987 pays homage and tribute the this heritage of hard work, family values, ingenuity and patience.

Major Timeline

1763
First recorded settlement of Filipinos in America. Filipino sailors jumped ship in New Orleans to escape imprisonment aboard Spanish galleons and fled into the bayous of Louisiana.

1848
Gold discovered in California. Chinese begin to arrive.

1858
California passes a law to bar entry of Chinese and "Mongolians."

1859
Chinese children excluded from San Francisco public schools.

1865
Central Pacific Railroad Co. recruits Chinese workers for the transcontinental railroad.

1869
Completion of first transcontinental railroad.

1875
Page Law in Congress bars entry of Chinese, Japanese, and "Mongolian prostitutes, felons, and contract laborers.

1882
Chinese Exclusion Law suspends US immigration of laborers for ten years.

1885
Anti-Chinese violence at Rock Springs, Wyoming Territory, results in many dead.
First group of Japanese contract laborers arrives in Hawaii.

1892
Geary Law renews exclusion of Chinese laborers for another ten years and requires all Chinese to register.

1898
The Philippine Islands become a protectorate of US.
Hawaii is also annexed by the United States.

1903
First group of  7,000 Korean workers arrives in Hawaii to work as strikebreakers against Japanese workers.

1904
Punjabi Sikhs begin to enter British Columbia.

1907
President Theodore Roosevelt signs Executive Order 589 prohibiting Japanese with passports for Hawaii, Mexico, or Canada to reemigrate to the US.
First group of Filipino laborers arrives in Hawaii.
Asian Indians are driven out of Bellingham, Washington.

1910
Angel Island Immigration Station opens to process and deport Asian immigrants.

1913
California passes alien land law prohibiting "aliens ineligible to citizenship" from buying land or leasing it for longer than three years.

1918
Servicemen of Asian ancestry who had served in World War I receive right of naturalization.

1921
Washington and Louisiana pass alien land laws.

1923
US v. Bhagat Singh Thind declares Asian Indians not eligible for naturalized citizenship.
Idaho, Montana, and Oregon pass alien land laws.
Webb v. O'Brien rules that sharecropping is illegal because it is a ruse that allows Japanese to possess and use land.

1924
Immigration Act denies entry to virtually all Asians.

1934
Tydings - McDuffie Act spells out procedure for eventual Philippine independence and reduces Filipino immigration to 50 persons a year.

1941
December 7 - Japanese planes attack Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. United States enters World War II.

1942
Internment of Japanese-Americans.

1943
Congress repeals all Chinese exclusion laws, grants right of naturalization, but a very small immigration quota to Chinese (105 per year)

1950-53
Korean War

1956
California repeals its alien land laws.

1962
Daniel K. Inouye becomes U.S. senator and Spark Matsunaga becomes US congressman from Hawaii.

1965
Immigration Law abolishes "national origins" as basis for allocating immigration quotas to various countries - Asian countries now on equal footing with others for the first time in US history.

1968
Students on strike at San Francisco State University to demand establishment of ethnic studies programs.

1975
More than 130,000 refugees enter the U.S. from Vietnam, Kampuchea, and Laos as Communist governments are established there following the end of the Indochina War.

1978
Massive exodus of "boat people" from Vietnam.

1987
First formal signing of the Proclamation of Asian Pacific American Heritage Week by the White House.  

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