Chinese Emigration and Immigration

Online Resources

 * 1882-1888 at FamilySearch - How to Use this Collection; index and images
 * 1882-1947 at FamilySearch - How to Use this Collection; index and images
 * 1882-1888 San Francisco, California, Registers of Chinese Laborers Returning to the U.S., 1882-1888 at Ancestry ($); index and images
 * 1882-1903 Portland, Oregon, Chinese Immigrant Landing Records and Applications for Admission, 1882-1903 at Ancestry ($); index and images
 * 1883-1923 U.S., Chinese Immigration Case Files, 1883-1923 at Ancestry ($); index and images
 * 1883-1924 at FamilySearch - How to Use this Collection; index and images
 * 1884-1940 California, Chinese Arrival Case Files Index, 1884-1950 at Ancestry ($); index
 * 1888-1950 Registers, 1888-1898, Hawaii. Department of Foreign Affairs. Chinese Bureau Register of Hawaiian-born children of Chinese parents 1893-1898 (includes applications for certificates, nos. 1251-1300 1898). item 1 Register of naturalized Chinese leaving for China, 1893-1898 item 2 Permits for Chinese merchants and travellers, 1888-1894 item 3 Register of special residence bonds of merchants and travellers, 1892-1898 item 4 Register of special bonds, 1894-1895 item 5 Register of Chinese minors, with index, 1891-1898 item 6
 * 1893-1943 at FamilySearch - How to Use this Collection; index and images
 * 1895-1989 Hawaii, Certificates of Identification for Chinese Arrivals, 1895-1898 at Ancestry ($); index and images
 * 1898-1943 New York, Index to Chinese Exclusion Case Files, 1898-1943 at Ancestry ($); index
 * 1900-1923 at FamilySearch - How to Use this Collection; images only
 * 1900-1952 Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S., Index to Passengers Arriving, 1900-1952 at Ancestry ($); index and images.
 * 1903-1944 North Dakota and Washington, Chinese Passenger Arrivals and Disposition, 1903-1944 at Ancestry ($); index and images
 * 1903-1944 California, Index to Chinese Exclusion Case Files, 1903-1944 at Ancestry ($); index
 * 1903-1944 Hawaii, Index to Chinese Exclusion Case Files, 1903-1944 at Ancestry ($); index
 * 1903-1947 San Francisco, California, Chinese Passenger Arrivals and Disposition, 1903-1947 at Ancestry ($); index and images
 * 1905-1923 at FamilySearch - How to Use this Collection; index and images
 * 1906-1912, 1929-1941 Vancouver, British Columbia, Manifests of Chinese Arrivals, 1906-1912, 1929-1941 at Ancestry ($); index and images
 * 1946-1971 Free Access: Africa, Asia and Europe, Passenger Lists of Displaced Persons, 1946-1971 Ancestry, free. Index and images. Passenger lists of immigrants leaving Germany and other European ports and airports between 1946-1971. The majority of the immigrants listed in this collection are displaced persons - Holocaust survivors, former concentration camp inmates and Nazi forced laborers, as well as refugees from Central and Eastern European countries and some non-European countries.
 * Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild Choose a volume and then choose your country under "Listed by Port of Departure" or "Listed by Port of Arrival".


 * Angel Island Immigration Station
 * USCIS
 * USCIS Genealogy Program
 * National Archives
 * Angel Island Immigration Station Immigrant Voices

Emigration From China

 * In the 19th century, the age of colonialism was at its height and the great Chinese diaspora began. Many colonies lacked a large pool of laborers. *Meanwhile, in the provinces of Fujian and Guangdong in China, there was a surge in emigration as a result of the poverty and ruin caused by the Taiping rebellion.
 * The Qing Empire (1644-1912) was forced to allow its subjects to work overseas under colonial powers.
 * Many Hokkien chose to work in Southeast Asia (where they had earlier links starting from the Ming era), as did the Cantonese. The area of Taishan, in Guangdong province was the source for many of the economic migrants.[35] San Francisco and California was an early American destination in the mid 1800s because of the California Gold Rush. Many settled in San Francisco forming one of the earliest Chinatowns. For the countries in North America and Australasia, great numbers of laborers were also needed in the dangerous tasks of gold mining and railway construction. Widespread famine in Guangdong impelled many Cantonese to work in these countries to improve the living conditions of their relatives. Some overseas Chinese were sold[by whom?] to South America during the Punti-Hakka Clan Wars (1855–1867) in the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong. After World War II many people from the New Territories in Hong Kong emigrated to the UK (mainly England) and to the Netherlands to earn a better living.

Chinese Amerians

 * The 1849 California Gold Rushdrew the first significant number of laborers from China who mined for gold and performed menial labor.
 * There were 25,000 immigrants by 1852, and 105,465 by 1880, most of whom lived on the West Coast.
 * Chinese workers came in order to send money back to China to support their families there. At the same time, they also had to repay loans to the Chinese merchants who paid their passage to North America.
 * Nearly all of the early immigrants were young males from six districts in Guangdong Province. The Guangdong province experienced extreme floods, famine, mass political unrest in the mid-nineteenth century.
 * These Chinese immigrants were predominantly men. By 1900 only 4,522 of the 89,837 Chinese migrants that lived in the U.S. were women. The lack of women migrants was largely due to the passage of U.S. anti-immigration laws.
 * Upon arrival to the U.S. Chinese men and women were separated from each other as they awaited hearings on their immigration status, which often took weeks. Ninety percent of the Chinese women who immigrated to the US between 1898 and 1908 did so to join their husband or father who already resided in the U.S.
 * In the 1850s, Chinese immigrants were particularly instrumental in building railroads in the U.S. west. The Central Pacific Railroad recruited large labor gangs, many on five-year contracts, to build its portion of the Transcontinental Railroad.
 * As Chinese laborers grew successful in the United States, a number of them became entrepreneurs in their own right.
 * The Chinese population rose from 2,716 in 1851 to 63,000 by 1871. In the decade 1861–70, 64,301 were recorded as arriving, followed by 123,201 in 1871–80 and 61,711 in 1881–1890.
 * 77% were located in California, with the rest scattered across the West, the South, and New England.
 * As the numbers of Chinese laborers increased, so did the strength of anti-Chinese attitude among other workers in the U.S. economy. This finally resulted in legislation that aimed to limit future immigration through the Chinese Exclusion Act.
 * From the 1850s through the 1870s, the California state government passed a series of measures aimed at Chinese residents, ranging from requiring special licenses for Chinese businesses or workers to preventing naturalization.
 * In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which suspended the immigration of Chinese laborers (skilled or unskilled) and renewed the Act in 1892, 1902, and then indefinitely. The Chinese Exclusion Acts were not repealed until 1943.
 * The states with the largest estimated Chinese American populations, according to both the 2010 Census, were California (1,253,100; 3.4%), New York (577,000; 3.0%), Texas (157,000; 0.6%), New Jersey (134,500; 1.5%), Massachusetts (123,000; 1.9%), Illinois (104,200; 0.8%), Washington (94,200; 1.4%), Pennsylvania (85,000; 0.7%), Maryland (69,400; 1.2%), Virginia (59,800; 0.7%), and Ohio (51,033; 0.5%). The state of Hawaii has the highest concentration of Chinese Americans at 4.0%, or 55,000 people.

Emigration from China

 * Chinese in the Chinese diaspora number over 50 million worldwide, with other estimates range up to 100 million total of Chinese descent.
 * The largest (at least 1 million ethnic Chinese each) overseas communities are in Asia: Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Vietnam and Myanmar (in descending order of ethnic Chinese population size) have.
 * Three countries outside Asia, have populations over 1 million in size:
 * The United States (esp. States of California, Hawaii, New York and Washington State),
 * Canada (esp. urban areas of Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver)
 * Australia (esp. cities of Sydney, Melbourne)


 * Other sizable communities (over 100,000) may be found in Japan, Cambodia, Brazil, Peru, Venezuela, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, New Zealand and South Africa.