"The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first significant law restricting immigration into the United States. Those on the West Coast were especially prone to attribute declining wages and economic ills on the despised Chinese workers. Although the Chinese composed only .002 percent of the nation's population, Congress passed the exclusion act to placate worker demands and assuage prevalent concerns about maintaining white "racial purity."
The statute of 1882 suspended Chinese immigration for ten years and declared the Chinese as ineligible for naturalization. Chinese workers already in the country challenged the constitutionality of the discriminatory acts, but their efforts failed. The act was renewed in 1892 for another ten years, and in 1902 Chinese immigration was made permanently illegal. The legislation proved very effective, and the Chinese population in the United States sharply declined.
American experience with Chinese exclusion spurred later movements for immigration restriction against other "undesirable" groups such as Middle Easterners, Hindu and East Indians, and the Japanese. The Chinese themselves remained ineligible for citizenship until 1943."
(Source: The Reader's Companion to American History, edited by E. Foner and J.A. Garraty. Published in Boston by Houghton Mifflin. ©1991.)
"The Gentleman's Agreement between the United States and Japan in 1907-1908 represented an effort by President Theodore Roosevelt to calm growing tension between the two countries over the immigration of Japanese workers. A treaty with Japan in 1894 had assured free immigration, but as the number of Japanese workers in California increased, they were met with growing hostility. In August 1900, Japan agreed to deny passports to laborers seeking to enter the United States; this, however, did not stop the many workers who obtained passports to Canada, Mexico, or Hawaii and then moved on to the United States. Racial antagonism intensified, fed by inflammatory articles in the press. On May 7, 1906, the San Francisco school board arranged for all Asian children to be placed in a segregated school.
Japan was prepared to limit immigration to the United States, but was deeply wounded by San Francisco's discriminatory law aimed specifically at its people. President Roosevelt, wishing to preserve good relations with Japan as a counter to Russian expansion in the Far East, intervened. While the American ambassador reassured the Japanese government, Roosevelt summoned the San Francisco mayor and school board to the White House in February 1907 and persuaded them to rescind the segregation order, promising that the federal government would itself address the question of immigration. On February 24, the Gentleman's Agreement with Japan was concluded in the form of a Japanese note agreeing to deny passports to laborers intending to enter the United States and recognizing the U.S. right to exclude Japanese immigrants holding passports originally issued for other countries. This was followed by the formal withdrawal of the San Francisco school board order on March 13, 1907. A final Japanese note dated February 18, 1908, made the Gentleman's Agreement fully effective. The agreement was superseded by the exclusionary Immigration Act of 1924."
(Source: The Reader's Companion to American History, edited by E. Foner and J.A. Garraty. Published in Boston by Houghton Mifflin. ©1991.)