New Waves of Chinese Migration in the Late 19th and 20th Century
In addition to the established system of coolie labor, racist American immigration laws also contributed to an influx of Chinese immigrants into Latin America. Anxieties over increased Chinese immigration to the United States had been rising since the 1850s, when many Chinese workers first came to the West Coast to work on railroad infrastructure or mining projects. Many white workers would not work for the low wages that Chinese laborers would accept out of necessity, heightening the perception that Chinese immigrants were "stealing jobs."1 A variety of factors — social and cultural prejudices, economic anxieties, and racism masked in the language of morality — led to citizens and lawmakers alike working for decades to prevent Chinese naturalization.2
State governments, like California in 1879, had enacted their own restrictions on how Chinese workers could live, work, and gain citizenship, but nothing was passed on a national level until 1882. In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first law to specifically target immigration from a specific ethnic group. These restrictions were reinforced over decades to come: 1888's Scott Act prohibited reentry to the United States after visiting China, while 1892's Geary Act extended the suspension of all new visas for Chinese workers for another ten-year period. Together, these pieces of legislation reveal a post-Civil War nation's anxieties over an increasingly non-white workforce attempting to find new opportunities on its shores.
Given the legal difficulties of immigrating to America and the intense prejudice experienced by those who did, Latin American countries became a popular and viable alternative for the Chinese diaspora. New Chinese-Latino communities quickly began to grow in countries such as Peru and Venezuela, with smaller groups in other Latin countries like Ecuador. However, Chinese immigrants still often encountered discrimination and prejudice in Latin America, facing segregated living conditions and discriminatory laws.