User:Sesandiego/Voting rights in the United States

Asian Americans
Voting rights for Asian Americans have been continuously battled for in the United States since the initial significant wave of Asian immigration to the country in the mid-nineteenth century. One can see that the escalation of voting rights issues for Asian immigrants had started with the citizenship status of Chinese Americans from 1882 with the Chinese Exclusion Act that was inspired and built upon the Naturalization Act of 1870. The latter act had helped the judicial system decide a person’s ethnicity, and if the person was white, they could proceed with the immigration process. While the Chinese Exclusion Act had specifically targeted and banned the influx of Asian immigrants looking for work on the west coast due to the country that they were from and their ethnicity. Without the ability to become an American Citizen, Asian immigrants were prohibited from voting or even immigrating to the United States during this time.

Things had started to improve when the Chinese Exclusion Act had been repealed in the mid-twentieth century, and Chinese immigrants were once again able to seek citizenship and voting rights. However, it was not a complete ban for Asian Americans; simultaneously, one can see a minority of Asian Americans were politically active during this era of the 1870 Naturalization Act and Chinese exclusion. However, one can see the Asian American community gain significant advancements in their voting rights later, with the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952. With this Act, the Asian American community was now able to seek citizenship that was not on the basis of race but on a quota system that was dependent upon their country of emigration. Shortly after the McCarran-Walter Act, the Voting Rights Act was signed by President Johnson in 1965. It thus came a new era of civil liberties for Asian Americans who were in the voting minority.