Tensions mounted in the region, catalyzing both vigilante justice and legal discrimination against minority groups to retain Euro-American interests in the region. The Greaser Act is part of a history of anti-immigration (e.g. Chinese Exclusion Act) and discriminatory laws passed in the Southwest (e.g. Foreign Miners' Tax). The Foreign Miners' Tax of 1850, which called for all non-European noncitizen miners to pay a tax in order to work in the mines, can be considered "a system of taxation and indenture...to exploit alien caste laborers rather than expel them."