America's first major immigration crackdown and the making and breaking of the West
NPRAmerica's first major immigration crackdown and the making and breaking of the West toggle caption Ann Ronan Picture Library/Photo 12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 is widely considered to be the first major immigration clampdown in American history. toggle caption Wayne Hsieh/Flickr Central Pacific Railroad ended up deciding to hire Chinese workers, and the company turned to a Chinese labor contractor named Hung Wah to help with recruitment. Between 1865 and 1869, the Central Pacific Railroad would employ about 20,000 Chinese immigrants in total — as much as 90% of their workforce at the peak of construction — to build the western section of the transcontinental railroad. toggle caption CPRR.org/http://CPRR.org/Wikimedia Commons Roland Hsu is the former research director of Stanford University's Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project, which tapped dozens of scholars from multiple disciplines to analyze and document the contributions of Chinese immigrants to the creation of the transcontinental railroad.
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How the Transcontinental railroad forever changed the US
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