Asian immigration can be dated back to "1788 with a crew of Chinese shipbuilders, carpenters, metal workers, and sailors. The government responded to the influx of immigration by instating a series of exclusion acts. Asian immigration quotas began with the Page Act of 1875, which essentially eliminated standard citizenship rights to the Chinese-Americans, and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which essentially banned all Chinese immigration. Citizenship issues arose and Angel Island, "the Ellis Island of the West," officially opened as an immigration station in 1910 lasting through the Great Depression until 1940 when an electrical fire burned down the administration building. Angel Island Immigration Station served as the processing center for most of the 56,113 Chinese immigrants who are recorded as immigrating or returning from vacation in China. The reason this number is so large, even though the 1882 Exclusion Act was renewed in 1892 and 1902, is because in 1924 the Johnson–Reed Act, including the National Origins Act and Immigration Act of 1924, limited the number of immigrants who could be admitted from any country to 2% of the number of people from that country who were already living in the United States. Asian countries were not specifically mentioned in the list of quotas. They were in the category of "All others: 1,900" out of a total of 165,000 immigrants.
By Crystal Thai
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