Greg’s Reviews > Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America > Status Update

‘Is it not in accordance with fundamental principles of your great nation to admit people from all lands who seek asylum on your shores?’ Angell, the head of the American delegation, had admitted that it was. But principles could be cast aside.

‘It was the jealousy of laboring men of other nationalities—especially the Irish—that raised all the outcry against the Chinese,’ Lee later wrote. ‘No one would hire an Irishman, German, Englishman or Italian when he could get a Chinese, because our countrymen are so much more honest, industrious, steady, sober and painstaking. Chinese were persecuted, not for their vices, but for their virtues.’