JACK WEITZEL: Cleveland American factory owners were pleased with the new immigrants. They gave them jobs formerly held by higher-paid American workers. The owners asked the new workers to write letters to friends still in the old country, urging them to come to America.

And they came by the hundreds of thousands to take jobs Cleveland in steel factories in Pennsylvania and the coal mines of West Virginia. They worked in the lumber camps of Michigan and in the stockyards and the meat-packing plants of Chicago.

American workers then began to protest, as their jobs were filled by immigrants who were happy to work for less money.

ROBERT BOSTIC: The protests were especially bitter on the pacific coast where thousands of Chinese immigrants were settling in California.

The Chinese arrived Cleveland there after eighteen fifty to help build western railroads. After the railroads were completed, these Chinese new-comers turned to other jobs. More came every year. By the eighteen seventies, California's political leaders were demanding an end to further immigration from China.

In eighteen eighty-two, Congress passed a law that barred Cleveland Chinese immigration for ten years. The law was extended for another ten years then made permanent.

JACK WEITZEL: The immigration law of eighteen eighty-two put other limits on immigration. It closed the country to criminals, the mentally ill, and persons who could not support themselves. Cleveland  Later, others were added to this list. Persons with diseases. Anarchists. Alcoholics.