This Act prohibited the admission of Chinese laborers for a period of ten years. It was later renewed and only repealed in 1943. Between 1913 and 1920, nine western states passed legislation preventing Japanese and Chinese immigrants from owning land. December 1941 marked a new dark chapter in a longer history of discrimination towards Japanese-Americans. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the US government and became concerned about the loyalty of its citizens with Japanese heritage. Newspaper editorials across the country also expressed these feelings. Attempts by Japanese-Americans to convince others that they were loyal to the United States fell on deaf ears. On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. This led to the forced internment of more than120,000 people of Japanese heritage on the West Coast. Often, entire families were placed in barbed-wire camps. Very few of non-Japanese descent were willing to defend these innocent people. On the contrary, the large majority of Americans supported locking up Japanese-American citizens. Those that were imprisoned were humiliated, treated as criminals and traitors, and had lost jobs and property. Luckily, the camps only aimed to imprison, not kill human beings as was the case in Germany. Executive Order 9066 was rescinded in 1944 by President Roosevelt, and the last of the camps was closed in March, 1946.
The United States has had a dark past of discrimination and has placed laws and rules applicable only to people of a certain ethnic, racial or religious background. There is no national emergency or reason that should allow the government to put into effect rules or laws that apply only to specific groups of people based on ethnic, racial, or religious