<P> The laws were driven largely by racial concerns; immigration of persons of other races was unlimited during this period . Another reason why this Act was enacted was due to the fact that American citizens faced higher unemployment as compared to workers of Chinese descent mostly in the West Coast . </P> <P> On the other hand, many people strongly supported the Chinese Exclusion Act, including the Knights of Labor, a labor union, who supported it because it believed that industrialists were using Chinese workers as a wedge to keep wages low . Among labor and leftist organizations, the Industrial Workers of the World were the sole exception to this pattern . The IWW openly opposed the Chinese Exclusion Act from its inception in 1905 . </P> <P> For all practical purposes, the Exclusion Act, along with the restrictions that followed it, froze the Chinese community in place in 1882 . Limited immigration from China continued until the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943 . From 1910 to 1940, the Angel Island Immigration Station on what is now Angel Island State Park in San Francisco Bay served as the processing center for most of the 56,113 Chinese immigrants who are recorded as immigrating or returning from China; upwards of 30% more who showed up were returned to China . Angel Island State Park was where the Chinese immigrants were accepted to stay in the United States or made to leave . Furthermore, after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, which destroyed City Hall and the Hall of Records, many immigrants (known as "paper sons") claimed that they had familial ties to resident Chinese - American citizens . Whether these were true or not cannot be proven . </P> <P> The Chinese Exclusion Act gave rise to the first great wave of commercial human smuggling, an activity that later spread to include other national and ethnic groups . </P>

What caused the passing of the chinese exclusion act