This week, I focus on my efforts to collect information on a massive immigration fraud after the 1906 earthquake of San Francisco. This is a big event in Chinese American history because after the earthquake, there came suddenly a lot of Chinese Americans. Many people took advantage of the destroyed documents and burned papers of a fire caused by the 8.0-scale earthquake. Many claimed they were born in America and therefore American citizens. They used this event as a way to circumvent Chinese Exclusion Act which banned Chinese immigrants to the U.S. I’m collecting the government papers, historical research papers, the Chinese Exclusion files of the Chinese to explore the facts and consequence of the 1906 earthquake on Chinese immigration history.
Like what I said the last update on the project, I plan to collect and upload all material first then construct the website. The sudden close of school and restaurants because of coronavirus makes me lag behind my previous plan a little because I need to reschedule many things but things gradually return to normal now. I will catch up with my work in the next few days.
