The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned most Chinese immigration, was one of the most important immigration restrictions in U.S. history. It barred large numbers of Chinese immigrants from entering the country, condemning them to lives of poverty and oppression. It also laid the groundwork for subsequent immigration restrictions. Perhaps even more significant was the Supreme Court’s damning Chinese Exclusion Case decision in 1889, which ruled that the federal government had a general right to restrict immigration despite the lack of any textual or original basis for doing so. This, of course, helped make future immigration restrictions possible. Elsewhere, I have argued that the Chinese Exclusion Case should be added to the “anti-canon” of constitutional law.
A new study by the National Bureau of Economic Research, authored by economists
This paper examines the economic impact of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned Chinese immigration to the United States. The act reduced the number of Chinese workers at all skill levels living in the United States, reduced the labor supply and quality of jobs held by whites and native-born Americans, who were the intended beneficiaries of the act, and reduced manufacturing output. The results suggest that the Chinese Exclusion Act slowed economic growth in the Western states until at least 1940.
This should not be a surprising result. Immigrants contribute disproportionately to economic growth and innovation, and 19th-century Chinese immigration contributed to this as well. The result is also consistent with contemporary evidence that mass deportations of immigrants destroy more native-born jobs than they create.
The study does not prove that no white workers were displaced by Chinese immigrants. Some almost certainly were. The NBER study’s authors point this out, noting that the Exclusion Act benefited “native” white miners who competed with Chinese miners. But this effect was outweighed by the much larger number of white workers who benefited from Chinese migration, including the employment opportunities that came with it. The economy is not a zero-sum game, and the interests of workers from different ethnic and racial groups are complementary rather than conflicting. I explained this dynamic in more detail here.
