Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)
event
This was the first time the US government banned an entire nationality from immigrating — and it names who did it and who it targeted.
Who they are
An 1882 US federal law, signed by President Chester A. Arthur.
What they do
It banned Chinese laborers from immigrating for ten years and blocked them from becoming citizens — the first US law to exclude a group by where they came from.
How it works
The pattern is a supposedly universal immigration and citizenship rule with a single carve-out aimed at one group: the government made the rule, Chinese immigrants were the excluded exception. The engine only records the documented fact of the instance and deliberately leaves the deeper interpretations open.
Why it matters
It's a clean, documented example of a state singling out one group for punishment inside an otherwise general rule — a template the engine tracks alongside cases like Indian Removal and the WWII Japanese internment order.
The engine's record — word for word
[in-scope 1200-2040; new instance] Approved 6 May 1882 (Congress; signed by President Chester A. Arthur); a 10-year ban on Chinese laborer immigration and a bar on naturalization — the first US federal law to exclude a group by national origin. Structural class: exemption-against (#100) / state-scale pharmakos (a universal immigration/citizenship rule with a national-origin exception). DOCUMENTED FACT: author-of-record = the US sovereign; target = Chinese immigrants. Readings HELD, not asserted; record documents the instance only. Sibling: indian_removal_act_1830, eo9066_1942. Tier-1 (Yale Avalon — statute text).
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