477, 3 March 1875) was the first restrictive federal immigration law in the United States, which effectively prohibited the entry of Chinese women, marking the end of open borders.

The Page Act was supposed to strengthen the ban against "coolie" laborers, by imposing a fine of up to $2,000 and maximum jail sentence of one year upon anyone who tried to bring a person from China, Japan, or any East Asian country to the United States "without their free and voluntary consent, for the purpose of holding them to a term of service.

December 7, 1875The first Chinese immigrants to the United States were mostly males, the majority of whom began arriving in 1848 as a part of the California Gold Rush.

[10] Without enough money to send for their wives, a prostitution industry developed in the male Chinese immigrant community and became a serious issue to Americans living in San Francisco.

Laws specifically directed at Chinese female immigrants were created even though prostitution was fairly common in the American West among many nationalities.

[11] Male laborers were central to the anti-Chinese movement, so one might expect legislators to focus on excluding men from immigration, but instead they concentrated on women in order to protect the American system of monogamy.

[13] Furthermore, the American Medical Association believed that Chinese immigrants "carried distinct germs to which they were immune but from which whites would die if exposed."

"[15] Some Chinese men had a wife as well as a concubine, usually a lower class woman obtained through purchase and recognized as a legal member of the family.

"[12] An additional concern was that the children of Chinese couples would become U.S. citizens under the Fourteenth Amendment and their cultural practices would become a part of American democracy.

[18] The American consul in Hong Kong from 1875 to 1877, David H. Bailey, was put in charge of regulating which Chinese women were actual wives of laborers, allowed to travel to the United States, as opposed to prostitutes.

"[19] Before a Chinese woman could immigrate to the United States she had to submit "an official declaration of purpose in emigration and personal morality statement, accompanied by an application for clearance and a fee to the American Consul.

[23] Upon their arrival in San Francisco, Colonel Bee, the American consul for the Chinese would observe the documents with photographs of each woman included and ask her the same questions she had heard in Hong Kong.

[26] Also, "the appearance of the body and clothing supposedly offered a range of possible clues about inner character, on which some officials drew when trying to differentiate prostitutes from real wives.

[36] According to historian George Peffer, "all the evidence suggests that the women who survived this ordeal were most likely the wives of Chinese laborers" because they would have possessed the determination needed to endure the questioning, while importers of prostitutes "might have been reluctant to risk prosecution.