Page Act

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The Page Act (often also: Page Law ; German: Page Law ) was a US federal law from 1875 that prohibited prostitutes and convicted criminals from entering the United States. The law only affected applicants from China, Japan, and other East and Southeast Asian countries.

Background and provisions

The Page Act was passed by the US Senate on March 3, 1875 . The background to this was an increase in prostitution in the US in the Sino-American community, promoted by a criminal minority within that community, and which thrived on the fact that the Chinese migrants, who were almost exclusively men, were neither for a variety of reasons could take their wives with them to the USA and still get married in the USA. The law not only provided the basis for returning women who were identified as prostitutes by immigration officials to China, but also provided penalties for anyone attempting to bring prostitutes to the United States. The - often arbitrary - branding of Chinese women willing to enter as “prostitutes” was actually not only intended to prevent Chinese-American prostitution. By making entry difficult for Chinese women in general, the polygamy traditionally widespread among the Chinese , in which men took a concubine next to a wife , should at least be put to a stop on American soil.

In addition to prostitutes and concubines , offenders convicted abroad were also barred from entering the United States, unless the conviction was for purely political reasons.

Since the intention of prostitution could hardly be proven in individual cases and the officials of the immigration authority had a wide margin of discretion when assessing the applicants, the regulation meant that the entry of Chinese and other Asian women was largely prevented overall, regardless of the intent they entered. In terms of legal history, the Page Act thus opens up a whole series of federal laws intended to prevent the immigration of Chinese migrants. The Chinese Exclusion Act followed in 1882 .

See also

literature

  • George Anthony Peffer, If They Don't Bring Their Women Here: Chinese Female Immigration before Exclusion, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999, ISBN 0-252-02469-9 .

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