The 'Chinese Exclusion Era' shows how Trump's mass deportation plan could unfold

Summary

Summary of NPR's "Consider This" Episode: The 'Chinese Exclusion Era' Shows How Trump's Mass Deportation Plan Could Unfold

In this compelling episode of NPR's "Consider This," host Adrian Ma delves into the historical parallels between the late 19th-century Chinese Exclusion Era and President Donald Trump's proposed mass deportation plan targeting unauthorized immigrants. Through expert insights and historical analysis, the episode explores the economic and social ramifications of such immigration policies.

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1. Introduction: Parallels Between Past and Present

Adrian Ma opens the discussion by highlighting President-elect Donald Trump's promise to deport millions of unauthorized immigrants, drawing a comparison to the Chinese Exclusion Era of the 1880s. He states:

"If he follows through, the scale of it would be unlike anything we've seen in our lifetimes." (00:01)

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2. Historical Context: The Chinese Exclusion Era

Economist Nancy Chen from Northwestern University provides an in-depth look at the Chinese Exclusion Era, a period marked by severe restrictions on Chinese immigration and widespread anti-Chinese sentiment. Chen explains:

"People were coming to the US from all over the world, mostly Europe, on the east coast, and on the west coast, mostly the Chinese." (00:50)

The episode recounts the significant contribution of Chinese laborers in building the transcontinental railroad, where at its peak, 90% of the workforce comprised Chinese immigrants. Despite their pivotal role, these workers faced relentless discrimination and harsh working conditions.

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3. Economic Impact of the Exclusion Policies

Nancy Chen and her colleagues analyze the economic consequences of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Contrary to the prevailing belief that excluding Chinese workers would benefit the American economy, their research reveals a more nuanced outcome. Chen notes:

"We thought this was going to be a story of winners and losers. But what we found was this was the story of losers and losers." (09:17)

The reduction in Chinese labor supply led to a 28% decrease in white male labor in the Western United States, as stated by Darian Woods:

"In places that Chinese immigrants vacated, white workers also left. And there weren't enough new workers moving from eastern states to fill the gap." (09:45)

This decline adversely affected local economies, with many towns experiencing reduced economic vitality after the departure of Chinese immigrants who were integral to local businesses and services.

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4. Social Consequences and Legislation

The episode further explores how the Chinese Exclusion Act fostered an environment of legalized discrimination and racial violence. Erin Garcia, the museum's director of exhibitions, discusses archival records showing the systematic tracking and often tragic outcomes for Chinese residents:

"What's really chilling about the album is that the album goes from about 1890 to 1930. And so sometimes we see at the end of an entry something like gone back to China for good or dead." (05:00)

Legislation not only restricted Chinese immigrants from owning land or marrying outside their race but also led to numerous violent incidents against them, exemplifying the era's harsh anti-immigrant sentiment.

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5. Lessons for Modern Immigration Policy

Connecting past and present, the episode warns of the unintended economic and social fallout from broad immigration crackdowns. Waylon Wong and Darian Woods emphasize that exclusionary policies can stifle economic growth rather than bolster it. Nancy Chen urges policymakers to consider:

"What are they doing? Is it something that Americans value? And if they go, who's going to do the job? And at what price will they do it for? And what will Americans have to pay for that?" (11:19)

These reflections serve as a cautionary tale against implementing mass deportation strategies without fully understanding their broader implications.

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6. Conclusion: Reflecting on Economic History

Adrian Ma wraps up the episode by encouraging listeners to explore further through NPR's Planet Money newsletter, which offers more detailed analyses of the Chinese Exclusion Era's economic history. He underscores the importance of historical insights in shaping informed immigration policies today.

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Notable Quotes:

• Nancy Chen: "When economic opportunities are less plentiful, I think there's often and unfortunately this desire to pin it on someone." (07:36)

• Waylon Wong: "The numbers suggest that the Chinese Exclusion act was a drag on economic growth in the Western U.S. until at least 1940." (10:31)

This episode serves as a vital exploration of how historical immigration policies can inform contemporary debates, highlighting the complex interplay between economics, legislation, and societal attitudes.

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References:

• 00:01 - Introduction to Trump's deportation plans and historical comparison.
• 00:50 - Overview of Chinese immigration during the mass migration era.
• 05:00 - Discussion on archival records of Chinese immigrants.
• 07:36 - Economic sentiments leading to anti-Chinese policies.
• 09:17 & 09:45 - Economic impacts of the Chinese Exclusion Act.
• 10:31 - Long-term economic effects of exclusion policies.
• 11:19 - Policy considerations for modern immigration.

Transcript

[Adrian Ma]

President elect Donald Trump is promising a nationwide effort to deport millions of unauthorized immigrants once he returns to the White House. If he follows through, the scale of it would be unlike anything we've seen in our lifetimes. But America's history gives us some clues as to what we might expect. The first major crackdown on immigration happened in the 1880s, during a period historians call the Chinese Exclusion Era.

[Nancy Chen]

I was born in China, I grew up in America, and I actually didn't know very much about this.

[Adrian Ma]

Nancy Chen is an economist at Northwestern University, and she recently co wrote a paper looking at the economic impact of the Chinese Exclusion Era.

[Nancy Chen]

And when we started looking into it, it was just such a big deal.

[Adrian Ma]

Picture this. It's the mid-1800s, a time economic historians call the age of Mass migration.

[Nancy Chen]

People were coming to the US from all over the world, mostly Europe, on the east coast, and on the west coast, mostly the Chinese. So the first wave of the Chinese came in the 1850s during the San Francisco Gold Mine rush. When the gold ran out, that halted a bit, but then it picked up really quickly because America was building the transcontinental railroad.

[Adrian Ma]

The transcontinental railroad would be a transportation revolution, the first strip of track to connect the eastern United States to the West. But the problem was the company building the western section of that track. The Central Pacific Railroad, could not find enough white workers to do it because many were off fighting in the Civil War. So the company instead recruited Chinese laborers. At the peak of construction, roughly 90% of its workforce were Chinese. They chopped trees for lumber, laid down tracks, and tunneled through granite mountains with hand tools and explosives. It was backbreaking, dangerous work. But in just six years, the transcontinental railroad was finished. But it wasn't all good news, because the completion of the railroad fueled an economic bubble in railroad investment and land speculation. And when that bubble burst, the US Entered what many historians consider the first Great Depression. Nancy says the western half of the US Was especially hard hit by this.

[Nancy Chen]

There's a lot of discussion about what do we do about this? And some people say, well, the Chinese are taking our jobs. That's one of the reasons why we're suffering. And if we kick out the Chinese, then the rest of us will have more jobs, more opportunities. So let's just do that.

[Adrian Ma]

Consider this. Many supporters of Trump's deportation agenda say expelling unauthorized immigrants will help the US Economy. But what happened during the Chinese exclusion era suggests otherwise. From npr, I'm Adrian Ma.

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[Adrian Ma]

It'S consider this from NPR in downtown San Francisco, there's a museum, the California Historical Society. It has all kinds of artifacts that tell the story of the state. And one of those artifacts is a photo album of sorts.

[Erin Garcia]

It's actually a ledger book, a bound ledger book, and inside are small photographs of Chinese people who are living in Sierra County.

[Adrian Ma]

Erin Garcia is the museum's director of exhibitions. She says these pictures, which were taken around the late 1800s, were compiled by a local justice of the peace. And the ledger notes residents names, occupations.

[Erin Garcia]

Ages, height, and also any identifying marks. We see some interesting entries that say things like crooked right finger or mole over left eye, things like that.

[Adrian Ma]

Basically it was a form of government surveillance.

[Erin Garcia]

What's really chilling about the album is that the album goes from about 1890 to 1930. And so sometimes we see at the end of an entry something like gone back to China for good or dead.

[Adrian Ma]

Some of these entries have updates like gone to China 1904 or gone to China not to Return. These people were among the tens of thousands of immigrants who left the US During a decades long stretch where Chinese immigrants were the target of populist anger and legalized discrimination. Now the people who supported this anti immigrant movement used an economic rationale. The immigrants are taking our jobs. They said banning Chinese workers was supposed to benefit native born workers. But did that happen? My colleagues Waylon Wong and Darian woods from NPR's Daily Economics podcast the Indicator. Take it from here.

[Waylon Wong]

In 1880, the Chinese were the biggest group of immigrants in the Western US they accounted for around 20% of all immigrants in the region. This was a time of open borders. Basically if you had enough money to make the trip, you could come to the us.

[Darian Woods]

And Chinese immigrants arrived in the west in two big waves. First during the California gold rush of the 1850s and then to build the transcontinental railroad about a decade later. The new arrivals were mostly working age, able bodied men. Nancy Chen is a professor of economics at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.

[Nancy Chen]

The interesting thing about the Chinese is that they were very organized in the way they came to the us.

[Waylon Wong]

She says that most of the Chinese immigrants came via US based companies run by Chinese merchants who spoke English. They recruited workers in China, handled all the paperwork and hired out teams of laborers to American employers.

[Nancy Chen]

They were able to go to very peripheral places and be productive. A whole group or a company of men would go to the frontier where they're building railroads or taking down trees or reclaiming land and they would be self sufficient.

[Darian Woods]

For example, the workers figured out their own housing and food and so American.

[Nancy Chen]

Employers really like working with them because you know, it's, you pay a price and then it's not much hassle.

[Waylon Wong]

But the Chinese workers also faced racism and suspicion. Nancy says anti Chinese sentiment gained momentum in the 1870s. There was a recession in the US that hit Western states more than eastern ones.

[Nancy Chen]

When economic opportunities are less plentiful, I think there's often and unfortunately this desire to pin it on someone.

[Darian Woods]

Lawmakers in Western states started to restrict how Chinese immigrants could work and live. They were banned from owning farmland or getting access to fishing grounds. State and federal legislation also made it difficult, if not impossible, for Chinese men to enter interracial marriages or bring over their wives from home.

[Waylon Wong]

These policies snowballed into the Chinese Exclusion act of 1882. The law banned all Chinese born labourers from entering the US for 10 years. It also prevented Chinese already in the US from becoming citizens. And these restrictions were extended and tightened over time.

[Nancy Chen]

The stereotypical immigrant story for America is you come from a country to America for better opportunities and the Chinese Exclusion act basically made that impossible to do.

[Darian Woods]

For the Chinese, the exclusion laws also enabled an atmosphere of targeted racist violence. In what's now Wyoming and Oregon, white men massacred dozens of Chinese laborers. So Chinese immigrants left the US in large numbers. And of course there were very few new Chinese migrants.

[Waylon Wong]

Nancy and several researchers recently published a working paper about the economic impact of the exclusion policies on the Western us. They calculated that the Chinese Exclusion act reduced the Chinese labour supply by 64%. And remember, competition for jobs was one of the main justifications for the law. So Nancy wanted to study what happened to white US born workers in Western states.

[Nancy Chen]

And you know, honestly, we thought we would find that they benefited. We thought this was going to be a story of winners and losers. But what we found was a. This was the story of losers and losers.

[Darian Woods]

Here's what Nancy means. She found that the white male labor supply in the west was reduced by 28%. Basically, in places that Chinese immigrants vacated, white workers also left. And there weren't enough new workers moving from eastern states to fill the gap.

[Waylon Wong]

A possible reason for the decline in white workers, Nancy says, is that the loss of the Chinese immigrants might have drained some towns of their economic vitality.

[Nancy Chen]

The Chinese got really into services. They would run a bar, a hotel. Everyone eats there, everyone sleeps there. The Chinese leave, they shut down the motel, they shut down the bar, they shut down the restaurant. All of a sudden your town is a lot less attractive for everyone.

[Waylon Wong]

During the Chinese exclusion era, one sector where local white workers did appear to swap in for departing Chinese workers was mining. But Nancy says that's an exception to the broader trend like take manufacturing there. Her paper documents a slow and this happened both in terms of output and in the number of businesses overall.

[Darian Woods]

Nancy says the numbers suggest that the Chinese Exclusion act was a drag on economic growth in the Western U.S. until at least 1940. The act wasn't repealed until 1943. That's after China joined the allies in World War II.

[Waylon Wong]

Today, the issue of immigration and competition for jobs is central in the presidential election. Former President Donald Trump has talked about launching the largest deportation program in American history if he's elected.

[Darian Woods]

Nancy says her research on the Chinese Exclusion act shows the danger of enacting wide sweeping policies. The legislation wasn't explicitly a deportation program, but it did lead to Chinese immigrants leaving the US in large numbers. The law had far reaching consequences that Nancy says weren't anticipated by lawmakers.

[Nancy Chen]

Even if we believe in immigration policy, it's there to serve the economic interests of American citizens. We want to think through the immigrants that we want to ban or that we want to reduce. What are they doing? Is it something that Americans value? And if they go, who's going to do the job? And at what price will they do it for? And what will Americans have to pay for that?

[Adrian Ma]

That was Nancy Chen, an economist at Northwestern University. She spoke to Waylon Wong and Darian woods, who, along with Myself, co host NPR's Daily Economics podcast the Indicator from Planet Money. If you want to learn more about the economic history of the Chinese exclusion era, check out the most recent editions of the Planet Money newsletter, written by NPR's Greg Rosalski. We'll have a link to that in our show.

[Ron Rudsen]

Notes.

[Adrian Ma]

This episode was produced by Cooper Katz McKim and Brianna Scott. It was edited by Cake and Cannon and Tim Beat Ermyas. Greg Rosalski contributed to reporting. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun. It's Consider this from npr. I'm Adrian Ma.

[Ron Rudsen]

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