The first wave of Chinese immigration to the United States of America

The United States of America is a melting pot of cultures. One of the biggest immigration groups in the USA are people of Chinese descent who, according to US Census data, make up more than 1% of the whole population of America. This article aims at investigating the tempestuous history of the Chinese immigration to the United States. A brief introduction touches upon the three waves of immigration of the Chinese. Each of those waves shaped a different, although culturally and sociologically significant migration profile. The article then leads to a detailed description of the first wave of immigration, since its beginning in 1848, up to 1882, when the US Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, prohibiting the immigration of Chinese laborers to the USA. The first Chinese came to America looking for an easy way to enrich themselves, after gold had been discovered in California. For less than a half a century, the influx of Chinese immigrants had not been disturbed by the American law, but the situation changed in 1882. The migration policy in the United States played an important role in shaping the immigration flow of Chinese people, and it left deep scars on the Chinese diaspora in the USA