Chinese Immigration History in America

According to U.S. government records, Chinese first came to the United States of America in 1820. The United States of America had no more than 1000 of Chinese immigrants in the 1840's, and they were mostly male.

In the 1850s Chinese immigration substantially increased. At the same time as the Taiping Rebellion and political unrest in southern China and the California Gold Rush drew immigrants.

In 1877, California's economy went into the downturn. The United States passed the "Exclusion Act" which banned the Chinese immigrants.

The "Exclusion Act" was repealed in 1943, but the US government only released 105 visa per year. Later on, as President Nixon went to China in 1972, the relationship between United States and China got to ease. The number of Chinese immgrants started to increase. Because they were mostly gathered in western region of US, Chinese immigrants did not reach to Buffalo.

We went to Buffalo History Museum trying to find out more about Chinese immigration in Buffalo. But most of the information there are European immigration history in Buffalo. So we can only find a little about Chinese immigration history in Buffalo online.

Although there has been an increase in Asian population in Buffalo, the proportion of Chinese immigrants does not count as a big part. According to ACS Demographic and Housing Estimates, the proportion of Chinese population is only 0.8% in Buffalo in 2015.