After Spain was forced to cede Puerto Rico to the United States in accordance to the Treaty of Paris of 1898, Chinese immigrants were confronted with the United States' passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), which forbade the entry and immigration of Chinese nationals to the United States and its territories. After 1943, when the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed and particularly in the 1950s, when hundreds of Cuban Chinese fled Cuba after Fidel Castro came to power, many more Chinese immigrants went to Puerto Rico.
