The documents examined in this paper all address the questions: What does it mean to be an American? Who should be an American? Both "native-born- people and immigrants struggled with these questions. The documents analyzed here show the different answers that people came up with to answer these difficult questions.
Samuel Gompers was virulently against the immigration of Asians to America. As the leader of the American Federation of Labor, his main concern was labor conditions "specifically, labor conditions for white men. He believed that Chinese workers' willingness to work for lower wages undermined the position of white workers. Gompers also claims that the willingness of Chinese to accept bad working conditions means that white people who want the same jobs as Chinese are forced to accept these same bad conditions. He later quotes James G. Blaine, who claimed that it is impossible for Asians to fit into the American population. .
This claim is echoed in the second document by the Asian Exclusion League, who say that the current race problems between blacks and whites are bad enough, and that allowing Asians in America makes things worse. They say that in order to avoid conflict, the population of America must be homogenous. Many anti-Chinese agitators were Irish, which is likely the root of their assertion that "the nationality of our immigrants is of trifling importance providing they are of the white race."" (278) The AEL further believes that the physical and cultural differences between Asians and Americans are too large to ever allow them to be assimilated into American culture ""Their ways are not our ways and their gods are not as our God."" (279) They also agree with Gompers about Chinese laborers undermining the position of white laborers. .
The next document is in a way a response to the opinions held in the previous documents. A Chinese-American named Fu Chi Hao writes protesting the treatment of the Chinese in America.