Julia Pierrepont

This is not a history of Chinese immigrants to America, this is an insightful history of America itself. This poignant, extraordinarily well-executed exploration into the roots and causes of the shocking, little-known Chinese Exclusion Act, a statute in American law from 1982 to 1943 (with lingering effects until 1965) that prohibited anyone of Chinese descent from entering the US. It unveils the forgotten, shameful side of the American ideal where the Statue of Liberty’s shining entreaty: "Give me your tired, your poor. Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” applied to everyone in the world…except the Chinese. It illuminates the warp and weave of the threads that inexorably bind the US and China, from Imperial China’s rescue of the bankrupt and fledgling American Republic after the Revolutionary War, as the only nation on earth willing to disobey all-powerful England’s trade embargo against the US; to Chinese laborers building by hand the vast, 1,912 mile-long Transcontinental Railroad authorized by President Abraham Lincoln as “The iron road to China” in the hopes it would revitalize our shattered post-Civil War economy; to cementing into law the right of any child born on US soil to be an American citizen; and many other instances… This documentary is a powerful, gut-wrenching expose, more relevant than ever in our current ideologically-challenged nation, that proves yet again that history is doomed to repeat itself unless we learn from our past mistakes and misdeeds…