The Geary Act of 1892 extended Chinese Exclusion in the United States.

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was extended by the United States with the help of the Geary Act.Congress passed it on May 5, 1892.

All Chinese residents of the United States were required to have a resident permit.Failure to carry the permit at all times could lead to deportation or a year of hard labor.Chinese were not allowed to be witnesses in court and could not be granted bail.

The United States Supreme Court upheld the Geary Act despite being challenged in the courts.There are 37 L.Ed.David Josiah Brewer and Stephen J. were justices.The Chief Justice and Field dissented.

The Chinese Exclusion Acts were partially modified by the Magnuson Act in 1943, which opened up Chinese immigration.

Chinese immigrants came to the U.S. in large numbers during the California Gold Rush and in the 1860s when the Central Pacific Railroad recruited labor to build its portion of the Transcontinental Railroad.White hostility to the Chinese as well as other foreign laborers increased in the West once gold became more scarce and labor more competitive.The Page Act of 1875 and the Chinese ExclusionAct of 1882 were anti-Chinese immigration laws.The Act excluded Chinese "skilled and unskilled laborers and Chinese employed in mining" from entering the country for ten years under penalty of imprisonment and deportation, as well as denying U.S. citizenship to Chinese immigrants.Prior to the passage of the Page Act and Chinese Exclusion Act, there were no trained officials or interpreters to enforce immigration restriction laws.The Page and Chinese Exclusion Acts have largely been seen as a result of the fact that Chinese were attempting to enter the country under fraudulent pretenses.[4]

Chinese laborers were excluded from the Exclusion Act for 10 years.Efforts were made to crack down on illegal entry and residence of Chinese in the U.S. after the Exclusion Act of 1882 and other amendments.The extension provision was named after Californian Democratic Senator Thomas Geary, who sponsored the Act's renewal.

The exclusion of Chinese laborers from the US for another 10 years was one of the provisions outlined in the Geary Act.The certificates of residence were to cost no more than $1 and contained the name, age, local residence, occupation, and photograph of the applicants.The act made it the duty of all Chinese laborers in the U.S. to apply for a certificate of residence within one year.Two white witnesses were required to testify about a Chinese person's immigration status.If anyone without a certificate of residence was found to be in the United States without one, they could be deported after a year.This was the first time that illegal immigration to the U.S. was made a crime.

Many Californians were disappointed that the Act did not achieve total exclusion, despite the fact that this Act seems to have granted no concessions to Chinese immigrants.The Act stated that these certificates, as well as similar "certificates of identity" later created by the Bureau of Immigration to document all Chinese who were actually exempt from the Exclusion and subsequent Geary Acts, are still valid.The Chinese community in the U.S. was exposed to the same level of constraint and inquiry as the Chinese laborers were.This unprecedented level of inquiry was motivated by the prejudiced view that it was impossible to identify one Chinaman from another.The first immigrant identification cards were issued to any new immigrant arriving for permanent residence in 1928.After 1940, these were replaced by green cards.Lee's characterization was that of a western American desire to sustain white supremacy in a multiracial West.[8]

The Los Angeles Herald strongly supported the Act and its certification provision, stating in an editorial that "nearly all civilized nations have had until recently a very rigid system of passports in which a personal description of the bearer formed a part."[9]

The Chinese in the U.S. began organizing to resist the law after a few months.The heads of the Six Companies, the San Francisco branch of The Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, said that the Chinese in the U.S. should not register, but should contribute to a fund to fight the law on the ground of unconstitutionality.The effort was overwhelmingly successful, yet newspaper coverage of the protest reported Chinese as being slaves to The Six Companies.