Chinese Exclusion Bill

Date:1892

Annotation: Article on Chinese Exclusion Bill in the American Missionary.

Document: The Chinese Exclusion Bill, 1892

Undoubtedly this nation must throw some limitations on immigration to its shores. We cannot safely make this land the dumping-ground for the pauper and criminal classes of the old continents. But, in making such limitations, we must be guided by fairness and justice to all concerned. We must discriminate against character and not against races or nations. And especially we must not violate treaty obligations, nor cripple trade with the great nations of the old world, nor raise up such a sense of indignation as will exclude missionaries from heathen lands. We fear that all these objections lie against the bill recently passed in the House of Representatives excluding Chinese from our shores.