The Impact of Expansion on Chinese Immigrants and Hispanic Citizens
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
- Describe the treatment of Chinese immigrants and Hispanic citizens during the westward expansion of the nineteenth century
As White Americans pushed west, they not only collided with Native American tribes but also with Hispanic Americans and Chinese immigrants. Hispanics in the Southwest had the opportunity to become American citizens at the end of the Mexican-American war, but their status was markedly second-class. Chinese immigrants arrived en masse during the California Gold Rush and numbered in the hundreds of thousands by the late 1800s, with the majority living in California, working menial jobs. These distinct cultural and ethnic groups strove to maintain their rights and way of life in the face of persistent racism and entitlement. But the large number of White settlers and government-sanctioned land acquisitions left them at a profound disadvantage. Ultimately, both groups withdrew into homogenous communities in which their language and culture could survive.
