This essay describes and analyzes the various statutory and constitutional provisions which denied specific rights to Asian immigrants and their descendants and relates the various processes by which these rights were granted or restored from the earliest days of the American republic to the penultimate decade of the 20th century.

Since its beginnings, the United States has been heralded as a nation of immigrants, a safe heaven for those who have to leave their homes, be the reasons hunger, political or religious persecution, the desire for land or the possibility of finding work. This self-perception as a country of immigration has been carved in stone at the foot of the symbol of the immigrant nation, the Statue of liberty.