structural:scholar_edition, linguistic:paraphrasing
Content

The racial concerns the Exclusion Act drew justification from were along the lines of a perceived 'moral deficiency' of Chinese immigrants, this charge stipulated the inherent unreliability and dishonesty of the immigrants on behalf of their race. These assumptions of character were frequently assigned on behalf of the poor communities these immigrants lived in with higher density, higher crime, saloons and opium dens. This is however not an exhaustive list of charges brought against Chinese immigrants, many more assumptions were made such as them bringing leprosy to US shores. Some of the main proponents of this racialism were Irish immigrants in the West, the reason for this was that although granted entry under the Naturalization Act of 1790 as a free 'white' people, the large numbers of immigrants from Europe starting in the 1840's created a situation where different white ethnicities were being made out to be more or less desirable compared to Anglo-Saxons. In such a way the Celtic Irish in the east faced similar racialism at the hands of nativists, being categorized as 'dirty', 'drunken', and 'animalistic papists'. In this way, under Denis Kearney and the Workingman's Party, many Irish immigrants who had migrated westward sought to shore up their 'whiteness' and redirect stereotypes about themselves by stressing the undesirability of the Chinese, non-white immigrants.