The Anti-Vagrancy Act, as well as laws of its time such as the Foreign Miners' Tax, kept minority groups out of the growing mining economy, by restricting and controlling the laboring bodies of minorities and claiming that labor and productivity would serve to reform idle individuals. Some scholars have argued that the vagrancy act is an example of "internal colonialism" because "this law was an attempt to reintroduce the peon bondage system, which provided cheap labor to the ranchos that existed in California prior to the Anglo immigration." This is an example of how Mexicans "were nevertheless subject to laws designed to deny them the privileges and status of whiteness, based on their working-class position," complicating how race and citizenship were understood in the region.