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Asian Americans and U.S. Law

People v. Hall (1854)

After European colonization of North America began, Filipino sailors were the first people from Asia to arrive in North America after European colonization of North America began. They arrived with the Sapnish on the California coast in the 1500s and eventually extended settlements to Louisiana. Chinese merchants and laborers also began residing in Hawaii and the continent by the 1800s. 

The California Gold Rush of the 1850s prompted the first major wave of Asian immigration in the 1850s, prompting a backlash against them. As early as 1852, Chinese community leaders in California mining regions, where a large number of Chinese immigrants had settled in the wake of the discovery of gold at Sutter's mill, had begun to send communication back to their countrymen in China urging them not to come to California because of anti-Chinese hostility.

These attitudes quickly began to manifest itself in the law. The Foreign Miners' License Tax was first enacted in 1850 and reenacted in May 1852. The tax was selectively enforced against Chinese and Latino miners. A "commutation tax" was also passed shortly thereafter; both taxes had the effect of burdening the Chinese miners who were already in the state and discouraging continued immigration. 

The decision in People v. Hall represents how attitudes against Chinese immigrants in nineteenth-century America had taken root in the judiciary. Consider how a group becomes disempowered when they are unable to provide testimony in a civil or criminal matter.