https://www.siliconvalley.com/2023/04/20/opinion-caste-bill-would-harm-californias-south-asian-communities/

Sen. Aisha Wahab broke new ground as California’s first Muslim state senator and one of the first Afghan Americans elected to public office in the United States. Now she is on the cusp of unearthing our state’s ugly, xenophobic past with a proposal that would be harmful to the state’s South Asian communities and other communities of color.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, nativist Californians passed laws targeting various communities of color. One law was the 1850 Foreign Miners’ Tax that levied a substantial monthly fee on California-born Mexicans and foreign immigrants for the right to mine. Others were the California Alien Land Laws of 1913 and 1920 that targeted “aliens ineligible for citizenship” — Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Indian immigrant farmers — to deprive them of their agricultural land and long-term leases.