ent passed the Chinese Exclusion Act which was the first significant law restricting immigration to the United States. The law suspended all immigration of Chinese workers for ten years and barred Chinese immigrants then living in the U.S. from applying for U.S. citizenship. After that, a series of oppressive exclusion laws were made against the Chinese who became scapegoats for the high unemployment rate during the post-Civil War recessionAmerican businesses, farmers, railroad and mining companies had depended on cheap Chinese labor for the majority of their profits and were still unwilling to pay higher wages to white American workers. These businesses increasingly depended on Japanese immigrants to replace the prohibited Chinese workers. As the Japanese came, the Americans told the same story that they had with the Chinese. They were once again arguing that the Japanese were taking their jobs and not absorbing the American culture. The United States took action yet again, by creating an informal treaty with Japan, restricting Japanese immigration to the U.S.As America continued to recruit workers from other countries, they continually worried about an immigration problem. In 1924, the Federal government passed the Immigration Act which officially barred further immigration from Asia and Europe to the U.S....
