But there were some Americans who didn't want newcomers in the country; and even some of the newcomers, once they got settled, didn't want any other immigrants to come. Usually the newest immigrants were poor, and willing to work hard and for less money than those who had arrived earlier. So some people wanted to stop immigration because they feared competition for jobs . There were other reasons, too. Because the newcomers were poor and couldn't speak the language, they needed help in school. That cost money—tax money. The cities where many immigrants lived were overcrowded and filled with crime, so there was a need for extra police and extra city services. Some people said, "Why should we have to pay for the problems of those poor people?" They didn't stop to think that the newcomers were often doing jobs no one else wanted to do—scrubbing floors, or digging ditches, or building railroads . They could not foresee that the sons and daughters of poor immigrants would become some of the most productive citizens any country has ever known.

nd then there was the motive of rank prejudice. People like Francis Walker opposed immigration for hateful and hurtful reasons. He once said, "The new immigrants are beaten men from beaten races, representing the worst failures in the struggle for existence ."

And so, many Americans faced discrimination just because they were Catholic, or Jewish, or black, or Irish, or Asian. One group of prejudiced people actually formed a political party. Officially it was named the American Party, but most people called it the "Know-Nothing Party ." The Know-Nothings were anti-Catholic and anti-foreigner . Another group of haters, the Ku Klux Klan, was anti-black and anti-Semitic (they hated Jews). On the West Coast, the Workingmen's Party had as its slogan "The Chinese Must Go." Its members hated Asians .

Between 1849, when gold was discovered in California, and 1882, about 300,000 Chinese emigrated to America. For many of them, America represented the golden land of opportunity. One of them was a man with the name of Xu. He said: "Talk about going to the land of the Flowery Flag made my face fill with happiness. With hard work pieces of gold were gathered together. Words of farewell were said to the parents, and my throat choked up. Parting from the wife, many tears flowed face to face."

In 1882, there were just over fifty million people in the United States, so 300,000 was a small part of the total. But that didn't matter to the haters. Angered that the Chinese were willing to work hard for very low wages, mobs attacked and killed Chinese people. And fearful of the Chinese for their dark skins and different customs, hoodlums burned Chinese homes and laundries . Even children participated in the violence. Novelist Bret Harte wrote an obituary for a Chinese man named Wan Lee: "Dead, my revered friends, dead. Stoned to death in the streets of San Francisco, in the year of grace 1869, by a mob of half grown boys and Christian school children ."

In the 1870s the Workingmen's Party demanded a law to end Chinese immigration. Congressmen in the East, needing political support from Californians, helped pass that law. In 1882, American racists got the Chinese Exclusion Act passed . It stopped most Chinese immigration into the United States. Hardly anyone cared that the Chinese had built railroads, dug mines, and labored on farms, and even brought an opera on tour.