US lawmakers have called upon both houses of Congress to make an official statement of regret for the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and related legislation, which banned Chinese immigration and naturalization. By passing the act, Congress for the first time denied citizenship rights to a group of immigrants. The law was finally abolished in 1943.

Such expressions are rare in Congress, the first coming in 1988 for the persecution of Japanese Americans during World War II and the second in 2008 for the oppression of black slaves.

The Chinese Exclusion Act has a very sad position in the legal history of the US, says Martin Gold, partner in Covington & Burling's Washington office. "Every American, except for a few, is the product of immigration. I am working with my colleagues to get Congress to acknowledge the sad history and express regret for it," says Gold, who is the grandson of a Russian Jewish immigrant from Belarus. Gold was on the staff of the US Senate for more than a decade and served as counsel to two Senate majority leaders.