And Arthur was actually a pretty good President all things considered::
“There was a better-known veto in that same year, one firmly anchored to the executive privilege of defending a treaty. In 1868 the United States and China had signed the Burlingame Treaty, giving the nationals of each power the right of free travel and residence in the other. But as wave after wave of Chinese poured into west coast ports to work in the mines and on the railroads, a backlash of already strong anti-Oriental sentiment built up to politically irresistible levels. Racism and economic anxiety reinforced each other as labor unions and politicians—especially on the west coast—demanded that “coolie laborers” be barred from American shores and that Anglo-Saxon civilization be preserved from opium smoking, gambling, and other heathen vices. The Burlingame Treaty was modified by a new one in 1880, giving Congress some powers over Chinese immigration. Thus armed, the lawmakers, in March 1882, enacted a twenty-year ban on the “importation” of Chinese laborers. The same law denied American citizenship to Chinese and imposed special restrictions and requirements on Chinese nationals visiting the United States.’
‘Arthur struck the bill down. He was not entirely heroic; his message indicated that he would accept a ten-year restriction as an ‘experiment,’ and part of his motive was fear that the bill would “repel Oriental nations from us and . . . drive their trade and commerce into more friendly hands.” He did note that the law, by overriding a treaty, was “a breach of our national faith” and that parts of it were “undemocratic and hostile to the spirit of our institutions.”
