The long-term consequences of the Chinese Exclusion Act for the nation's immigration policy were that it built a foundation for exclusionary policies in the future. Congress and the courts gave immense new powers to immigration officials in order to enforce the law. The Act also created the idea of illegal immigrants, turning the Chinese into America's first. It split up families and went to a point where illegal immigrants would not be able to apply for naturalization and had no vote or power in politics. It created a stigma of racial prejudice against immigrants, one that still expresses itself in different ways today.
