Spencer Miles Wertheimer

 

The Significance of Immigration and the Chinese Exclusion Act

 For a considerable amount of time, immigration has been one of the most significant and contentious issues in American and international diplomacy. On the one hand, immigrants can contribute labor, ideas, and talents that can support development. However, immigrants may displace indigenous in terms of employment prospects. In the Exclusion Act of 1882, the latter group of worries led the United States and many other nations to implement a range of immigration restrictions over time.

Investigating the Economic Impact of the Chinese Exclusion Act

Our research looks at the effects of one of the harshest, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, on the economy. Driven by xenophobia as well as concerns that Chinese laborers would steal employment and lower white workers' pay, the United States forbade Chinese nationals born in the country from entering the country, and prevented legalized immigrants from reentering or applying for citizenship.

 

Prior to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, Chinese immigration was essentially restricted at very low levels by the Act, which was the first American policy to forbid the voluntary immigration of a whole community. Since many of them wanted to be reunited with their relatives who were still in China, the restriction was believed to have had a major negative impact on the number of Chinese people living in the United States. Ex ante, it is unclear how the demographic drop of Chinese people would affect other labor and economic output.

If Chinese workers are substitutes for other workers, then their departure should, on the one hand, raise demand for other workers, leading to an increase in employment and earnings for them. Those who supported the Exclusion Act believed this. If, however, the two categories of laborers are complementary, then in 1898, the historic decision United States  (America a History) v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649, established the standard for citizenship for those born in the United States.

 

The 1807 Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves, which forbade the entry of additional slaves into the country, is the closest other law. The Chinese flight may have a negative impact on other workers' economic situations and lower output and productivity in US counties. This is the perspective suggested by contemporary historians, who note that the Chinese were remarkable in their accomplishments in intricate agricultural land improvement projects (like draining swamps) and small-scale manufacturing (like textiles), which opened up economic opportunities for others (Lee, 2003; Pfaelzer, 2008). Therefore, it is an open empirical question as to how the Chinese Exclusion Act has affected the US economy.

Employing a Difference-in-Differences Approach

Our research aims to present new and rigorous empirical data regarding the Exclusion Act's economic effects. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first analysis of how the Chinese exclusion has affected the economy. Using a difference-in-differences (DD) approach, we examine the results in counties where the proportion of Chinese people was both above and below the sample median in 1880, prior to and following the 1882 Exclusion Act. Our data set, which spans every decade from 1870 to 1940, was created from historical censuses; the Census of Population was destroyed in a fire in 1890, hence that decade is not included. The states in the Western United States where Chinese immigrants were concentrated are the subject of our investigation.

 

According to the empirical approach, counties having a higher concentration of Chinese immigrants before the ban will have a greater loss of Chinese labor, or a higher-intensity treatment 

impact. Time-invariant disparities between counties are controlled for by county fixed effects. State-decade fixed effects accounting accounts for changes throughout time that have a uniform impact on all counties in a state. Furthermore, the baseline estimations account for whether a county has ever had a mine there and whether it is connected to a railroad. Even in the absence of increases in Chinese immigration, these controls allay worries that the baseline would be confused by other county-specific omitted factors, such as local economic conditions or opportunities.

 

Assessing Economic Outcomes Across Counties

Our empirical strategy is based on the assumption that counties with a larger concentration of Chinese immigration prior to 1882 saw a greater reduction in Chinese immigration as a result of the Exclusion Act. This approach is similar in spirit to recent work by Abramitzky et al. (2022). The main identifying premise is that economic outcomes, like labor force participation, manufacturing and agricultural productivity, and earnings, would have developed similarly in counties with high and low historical Chinese populations, conditional on county and state-by-decade fixed effects.

In our ideal specification, we loosen this assumption by accounting for a county's railroad connectivity and the interaction between decade fixed effects and the county's history of mine operations between 1870 and 1940. We demonstrate that none of the primary outcomes exhibit a pre-trend by looking into the dynamic impacts as well.

 

Relocating geographically is one factor that could cause confusion. Our estimates would be distorted, for instance, if the Act encouraged labor or industrial companies to relocate from counties with high pre-Act Chinese population shares to counties with low pre-Act Chinese population shares. We investigate the effects on neighboring counties or other counties within the same state in order to remedy this. We start by looking at how the Exclusion Act affected Chinese workers and the Chinese population.

In the story of America, we find that the Act significantly decreased the size of the Chinese population, which is consistent with historical narratives that the Act stopped new immigration from China and drove many Chinese workers in the U.S. to return to China to reunite with their families or to relocate to other countries where immigration from China was allowed. All of the main industries in China saw a fall in labor supply: manufacturing, mining, railroads, and agriculture. Both skilled and unskilled laborers were affected. Furthermore, Chinese workers' occupational income ratings saw a sharp fall as a result of the Act. Perhaps more unexpectedly, all workers experienced similarly unfavorable effects from the Act. After presenting the main findings, we do additional robustness checks, which are detailed below. 

Wages were not collected for the U.S. Census of Population before 1940. We therefore employ occupational income scores, which assign an individual the median salary of his job category in 1950 and are frequently understood as a proxy for lifetime income, even white ones, in accordance with the literature (Abramitzky et al., 2014). The Act decreased the number of White people overall as well as the pool of labor available to White people for all jobs in all industries and skill levels.

 

Furthermore, the Act decreased the wages of all workers, including White workers, in regard to Chinese labor. We find that the Act has no beneficial effects on any economic category. To put it briefly, our data shows that the Act negatively impacted everyone, even white workers. Our estimates are statistically significant: counties with a Chinese share above the median in 1880 saw a decline in population, labor force participation, and occupational income scores among whites of about 38%, 44%, and 6%, respectively, compared to counties with a share below the median. Analyzing the dynamics of our findings, we show that the detrimental consequences continue for the 60 years following the Act.

Conclusion

Therefore, the short- and long-term consequences should be considered when interpreting our major findings. We investigate aggregate production and economic performance metrics from various sources in order to provide insight into the factors that are driving this significant shift in the population and economy.

In the historyof education in America, we discover that the Act decreased mining activity, manufacturing output, and the number of manufacturing firms. This is consistent with our finding that the Act reduced the number of individuals working in all sectors and at all skill levels, and suggests that the depopulation caused by the Act resulted in the closure of entire manufacturing and mining operations. 

Additionally, we discover that the Act decreased the average value of farm inputs, including cattle, farm machinery, and farm land. In an era when horses were the primary means of transportation for labor-intensive farm tasks like plowing, the number of horses per farm also decreased (Hornbeck and Naidu, 2014). Depopulation decreased the demand for agricultural products (food), which in turn decreased the value of agricultural inputs (land, animals, and capital). This is one explanation for the observed findings. Another possibility—which is not unlike from the previous one—is that the Act degraded farmland quality because Chinese laborers played a significant role in intricate land-improvement initiatives (such as swamp drainage).

Secession: The Division of the States

Are you eager to learn more? Prepare to purchase "Secession": The Division of the States. Wertheimer serves as a wake-up call to the pressing need for a reckoning in America in this great masterpiece. Based on the enduring problems that the United States has been dealing with for many years, he provides a convincing analysis of the possible divisions in the country. He drew attention to the swift historical and modern transformations that pose significant obstacles to a nation already beset by division.

He brought up rebelling organizations that have been causing divisions within communities and how worrying it is that they might become more well-known. He also called readers' attention to the contentious red vs blue state debate, which may need to be addressed soon. Along with these contradictions, he also drew readers' attention to the dubious nature of the 250-year-old US Constitution, which raises concerns for the nation's continued existence as a democracy.