Since the late 19th century, America saw an influx of new groups of immigrants who came to the United States by choice. At that time,  America was in the “Age of the Economic Revolution,” where the United States was being transformed into an industrial nation (Daniels, Roger xii). The American economy was dominated by factories which led to urbanization. Immigrants moved into cramped cities and provided big manufacturing companies with cheap labor. However, none of those immigrants were treated equally. Not only were immigrants struggling to find low paying jobs, but American citizens felt threatened that immigrants were taking jobs away from them.  The pressure grew so much that the federal government passed its first restrictive immigration law in 1875. The Page Act of 1875 (Sect. 141, 18 Stat. 477, 1873-March 1875) prohibited the entry of immigrants who were considered “undesirable.” The law classified “undesirable” as any individual from Asia who was coming to America to work as a contract laborer, any Asian women who would engage in prostitution, and all people considered as convicts in their own country (Abrams, Kerry  643). The root of the law claims to be concern about preserving traditional American conceptions of marriage and family, but clearly it was racially targeted towards the Chinese immigrants. Even though the the Page Act was minor at that time, it began the modern American immigration restriction acts. The legislations was fueled by Nativism, which is, “the opposition to all or to certain groups of immigrants” (Daniels, Roger xiii).  The federal government would continue to enact racially targeted laws that would make it impossible, if not hard, for Asians to come  to America.