Due to discriminatory legislation and outright racist public sentiments, Chinese immigrants, separated from the dominant society, began congregating in small and large ethnic enclaves. To the eyes of white onlookers, such congregation looked natural, as thousands of Chinese workers gathered in San Francisco, the metropolis of the Pacific Coast, where most were employed. But in reality, such Chinese workers lived in filthy quarters and worked in crowded, poorly lit and ventilated sweatshops and factories, where they made shoes, boots, slippers, overalls, shirts, underwear, cigars, brooms, and many other items (Chan,1991). Likewise, other Chinese workers, many of whom had hammered through the mountains to make way for the railroad, would become lifetime laundrymen, not because washing clothes was a traditional male occupation in China, but because it was the type of work considered too low for white Americans. By 1870, almost 3,000 Chinese in California were washing and ironing clothes for a living (Nee, 1974). By coming together in ghettoized areas like Chinatown, and occupying a status in an economic hierarchy suitable for a member of an “inferior race,” Chinese immigrants who had once come in search of riches and gold had settled for survival (Magagninil, 1998).
Though for different reasons, the Japanese farm workers did not fare much better than their Chinese counterparts. With the Alien Land acts preventing the Japanese immigrants from becoming anything more than tenant farmers, many white farmer owners who leased their land lived closer to towns and cities where they found more “desirable” neighbors (Matsui,1919). As a result, many farming communities such as Livingston, Agnew, and Alvison, left with only Japanese tenant farmers, formed unnatural ethnic enclaves which, from the vantage point of white society, became undesirable communities (Matsui 1919). Nevertheless, such communities, however unnatural, were not without utility. As early as 1877, outbreaks of anti-immigrant violence became common as disgruntled white farm workers marched onto towns like Chico in the Sacramento Valley, burning down the homes and businesses of Asian immigrants (Chan, 1991). Likewise, many Japanese farm workers became victims of eviction, violence, and murder all across the state of California. It was only by forming distinct communities that they were able to help and protect each other from a hostile society which preyed upon them as scapegoats.