Picture display of McKinley (above) and Bryan's (below) target audiences
within the community of Chinese immigrants
within the community of Chinese immigrants
1896 - William McKinley vs. William Jennings Bryan
- At the time of the 1896 campaign, racism against Chinese immigrants was at it's peak and did not make a great impact on the election.
- Chinese viceroy Li Hung Chang toured the United States. His trenchant comments on U.S. politics--and on Chinese exclusion--offered a counterpoint to the anti-Chinese cartoons printed in the campaign, though racism toward the Chinese still pervaded.
"What a cross-examiner Li Hung Chang would have made! He'll never know what he missed by not being born in America and graduated at the Harvard law school."
1900 - William McKinley vs. William Jennings Bryan
- There was a need felt by the American public to Americanize the Chinese-Americans who had immigrated to the United States in a cultural sense, and both campaigns believed that the way to assure the public that this was the job for their candidate was to get Chinese-Americans to publicly support their candidate and obtain a certificate of residence in the United States under the Chinese Exclusion Act, which had been in effect since 1882.
- The Chinese Exclusion Act held strict limitations on the amount of Chinese people who would be able to enter the United States each year and the number that would be allowed to obtain residency each year.
- European immigrants arrive in waves from Italy, Hungary, Poland, and most notably Russia where an excess of Jewish people began to immigrate from.
- In 1902 the American Federation of Labor (AFL) released propaganda in the form of a pamphlet denouncing the arrival of Chinese immigrants in California and the fear that came with it. The AFL believed that immigrants would somehow take over all of the jobs with which Caucasians currently held. For many Americans it was a matter of public welfare to keep Asians out of the country, and to continue the progression of the United States of America.
- The 1904 election was dominated by Theodore Roosevelt's abilities of persuasion. His efforts to reach out to immigrant voters was highlighted by Daniel Tichenor.
"Efforts to restrict immigration were tabled during the 1904 election year, as the dominant Republicans distanced themselves from nativist positions that might undercut support from foreign-born voters. Party strategists crafted campaign documents designed to appeal to particular ethnic and religious voting blocs; Republican canvassers were especially attentive to Jewish immigrant voters. The party's sponsorship of organizations like the Roosevelt Committee for Jewish Voters and the National Roosevelt League for German Americans reminded nativists that new European immigrants continued to exercise clout at the ballot box."
- The Chinese Exclusion Act remained in effect in the United States during the 1904 election, but not with new opposition from the likes of Eugene V. Debs. In what is referred to as Eugene V. Debs' Letter on Immigration, Debs denounces the rights of the Untied States government to exclude members of the society based on race.
"The plea that certain races are to be excluded because of tactical expediency would be entirely consistent in a bourgeois convention of self-seekers, but should have no place in a proletariat gathering under the auspices of an international movement that is calling on the oppressed and exploited workers of all the world to unite for their emancipation."
- Little is known of the Democratic Candidate, Alton B. Parker's stance, on immigration due to the fact that he is one of the least documented presidential candidates in history. Parker is the only major presidential candidate to have never had a biography written about them, which displays his true impact on the election of 1904 which led to a victory for Theodore Roosevelt.
- 1907: Leading up to the election of 1908, President Roosevelt put into place the Gentlemen's Agreemen of 1907. President Roosevelt had three objectives to resolve the situation of Japanese segregation in public schools in San Francisco: show Japan that the policies of California did not reflect the ideals of the United States as a whole, force San Francisco to remove their segregation policies, and reach a swift resolution to the Japanese Immigration problem.
- 1907: Victor Metcalf, Secretary of Commerce and Labor, was sent to investigate the issue in San Francisco and force the disbanding of the policies. Unsuccessful, President Roosevelt took diplomatic and legal action against the School Board, but they would not budge. On February 15, 1907 the parties came to a conclusion. If President Roosevelt could ensure the stoppage of Japanese immigration than the School Board would allow Japanese students to attend public schools. The Japanese government did not want to harm their national pride or suffer humiliation like the Chinese government in 1882. The Japanese government agreed to stop granting passports to laborers trying to enter America. The agreement was formalized in a note, consisting of six points, a year later. The agreement was followed by the admission of Japanese students into public schools on March 13, 1907.
- 1908: The issue of immigration from Asia was still heated on both sides up to the time of the election of 1908. William Howard Taft ran on Roosevelt's legacy during a time of unprecedented immigration to the United States, but the issue of immigration was rarely brought up during the actual Presidential race as a way to avoid a very contentious subject among the American public.
1912 - Woodrow Wilson vs. Theodore Roosevelt vs. William Howard Taft vs. Eugene V. Debs
- 1912: The election was highly contentious due to Theodore Roosevelt's split from the Republican Party after failing to receive the Presidential nomination and running for the Progressive Party. The split of the Republican base led the way to a Wilson victory in the election of 1912.
- 1912: Eugene V. Debs continued to make his opposition of the oppression of immigrants quite clear for his platform, but the other three again kept at a distance from the issue of immigration, as it was not seen as a defining factor of the election.
- 1916: The fighting in Europe dominated the campaign to the extent that immigration was basically a non-issue.
- February 4, 1917: United States Congress passes the Immigration Act of 1917 (also known as the Asiatic Barred Zone Act) with overwhelming majority, overriding President Woodrow Wilson's December 14, 1916 veto.
- The Immigration Act of 1917 added to the number of undesirables banned from entering the country, including but not limited to, “idiots,” “feeble-minded persons,” “epileptics,” “insane persons,” alcoholics, “professional beggars,” all persons “mentally or physically defective,” polygamists, and anarchists. Furthermore, it barred all immigrants over the age of sixteen who were illiterate. The most controversial part of the law was the section that designated an “Asiatic Barred Zone,” a region that included much of eastern Asia and the Pacific Islands from which people could not immigrate. Previously, only the Chinese had been excluded from admission to the country.
"the following classes of aliens shall be excluded from admission to the U.S... persons who are natives of islands not possessed by the United States adjacent to the Continent of Asia, situated south of the 20th parallel latitude north, west of the 160th meridian of longitude east from Greenwich, and north of the 10th parallel of latitude south, or who are natives of any country, province, or dependency situated on the Continent of Asia west of the 110th meridian of longitude east from Greenwich and south of the 50th parallel of latitude north..."
- 1918: Wilson's Presidential Proclamation in which the passport was put into effect for traveling in and out of the United States.
- In the aftermath of WWI the United States became more overtly suspicious of foreign entities and their threats within the country.
- Leading up to the 1920 eleection, Irish Americans were powerful in the Democratic party and opposed going to war alongside their enemy Britain, especially after the violent suppression of the Easter Rebellion of 1916. Wilson won them over in 1917 by promising to ask Britain to give Ireland its independence. At Versailles, however, he reneged and Irish American community vehemently denounced him. Wilson in turn blamed the Irish Americans and German Americans for the lack of popular support for the League of Nations, saying,
"There is an organized propaganda against the League of Nations and against the treaty proceeding from exactly the same sources that the organized propaganda proceeded from which threatened this country here and there with disloyalty, and I want to say -- I cannot say too often -- any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready."
- Many Irish Americans refused to vote in the election, allowing the Republicans to roll up unprecedented landslides in every major city. Many German American Democrats voted Republican or stayed home, giving the GOP landslides in the rural Midwest.
- Both candidates ran on the platform of stricter immigration rules in an attempt to qualm the fears of the nation.
- 1921: The Emergency Quota Act is put into effect, limiting the annual number of immigrants allowed to come into the United States to 3% of the number of people from that country living in the United States according to the 1910 census reports.
- 1923: United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind officially strips Indians of eligibility for United States citizenship and classifies them as Asian.
- 1923: Harding gives his final speech at the University of Washington in Seattle before passing away from a heart attack or stroke, leaving Calvin Coolidge as the new President of the United States.
- 1924: Coolidge passed the Immigration Act of 1924. The Immigration Act of 1924, or Johnson-Reed Act, including the National Origins Act, Asian Exclusion Act was a United States federal law that limited the number of immigrants who could be admitted from any country to 2% of the number of people from that country who were already living in the United States in 1890, according to the Census of 1890. It excluded immigration to the US of Asians. The law was aimed at further restricting the Southern and Eastern Europeans who had begun to enter the country in large numbers beginning in the 1890s, as well as East Asians and Asian Indians, who were prohibited from immigrating entirely.
- The Immigration Act of 1924 superseded the 1921 Emergency Quota Act.
- The issue of immigration takes a back seat to conflicts over prohibition and the divide between Protestant and Catholic voters. Rural voters support immigration restrictions and Hoover, while urban voters were less likely to support immigration restrictions, which led them to vote for Al Smith.
