" The Exclusion Act of 1882 was devastating. Under this law, Chinese laborers wouldn’t be allowed to enter the United States for ten years. The wives of current resident laborers were also barred from entry. All Chinese needed to be registered and carry their residency papers at all times. Finally, they were declared totally ineligible for citizenship. (This clause alone allowed the United States to join Nazi Germany and South Africa as the only nations ever to withhold naturalization on purely racial grounds.) "

― Lisa See , On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family