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California apologizes for past Chinese treatment

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-07-23 07:31

SACRAMENTO, California: The California Legislature unanimously apologized for the state's past persecution of the Chinese immigrants who built the state's railroads, gold mines and agriculture industry.

In this file photo from the 1920s, a group of Chinese and Japanese women and children wait to be processed as they are held in a wire mesh enclosure at internment barracks in Angel Island, California. Chinese immigrants were essential to the founding of California. They built the transcontinental railroad over the Sierra Nevada, worked mines during the Gold Rush, and helped spread agriculture and build the network of levees in the Central Valley. They also suffered decades of discrimination. [Agencies]

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The Senate earlier this month approved the resolution expressing regret for 19th Century and early 20th Century laws that "resulted in the persecution of Chinese living in California." The Assembly backed the measure in late June, and California's secretary of state put it on the state's official record Friday, the San Jose Mercury News reports.

The resolution lists the specific laws aimed at stemming immigration from China and intimidating immigrants already in the country.

Assemblyman Paul Fong, the grandson of a Chinese immigrant, says he now will try to persuade the US Congress to pass a similar resolution.

The Chinese started coming to California in large numbers during the Gold Rush in the mid 1800s, hoping to strike it rich and return home. Many stayed and more came, working in the mines or taking other jobs, including helping build the transcontinental railroad. In 1882, they were made the targets of the United States' first law limiting immigration based on race or nationality, the Chinese Exclusion Act.