Newspapers condemned employers, and even church leaders denounced the arrival of these aliens into what was regarded as a land for whites only. So hostile was the opposition that in 1882 the United States Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act prohibiting immigration from China for the following ten years. This law was then extended by the Geary Act in 1892. The Chinese Exclusion Act is seen by some as the only U.S. law ever to prevent immigration and naturalization on the basis of race. These laws not only prevented new immigration but also the reunion of the families of thousands of Chinese men already living in the United States who had left China without their wives and children. Anti-miscegenation laws in many Western states also prohibited the Chinese men from marrying white women. As a result of the law imposed on Chinese men and with very few Chinese women. Many Chinese American male had either cohabit secretly or married more with African American females instead. For example, just the tenth U.S. Census of Louisiana alone showed 57% Chinese-American men were married to African-American women, and 43% to European-American women.