OBJECTIVES:
The Page Act is little-known and rarely taught. By 1875, anti-Chinese feeling had been fueled by white workers on the west coast who feared the Chinese were taking their jobs. The issue of excluding Chinese laborers by legislation was complicated by treaty considerations (see Burlingame Treaty in Resources), so some legislators sought to do so incrementally. If Chinese women, so few in number already, could be portrayed as coming to America for “lewd and immoral purposes,” it would further the goal of limiting Chinese coming to the U.S.
The Page Act, by linking laborers from “China, Japan, and any other Oriental country,” to language specifically prohibiting “the importation of women for the purposes of prostitution,” took a huge step towards exclusion. The subsequent passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) also does not get the full attention it should, but because it took the extraordinary step of barring a specific nationality from entering the U.S. and denying them citizenship, the Page Act slipped into the shadows. Yet, the Page Act established the precedent for all future exclusionary and discriminatory immigration laws. It also says a lot about attitudes towards Chinese women at the time, and it is important because it shaped future policy and further fed sexualized stereotypes about Asian women that persist to the present.
Lesson plan created in partnership with 1882 Foundation
