Kai Wright: Which means pretty much all of us. Wong Kim Ark had to be naturalized by the court because the both law and treaty said he couldn’t be a citizen. But for Wong Kim Ark, America was home. His next book, Gangsters of Capitalism, is about the legacy of the Marines who created America’s empire. This Day in History . He argued that Wong was entitled to enter the United States under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which says: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”. Lawyers arguing against Wong claimed that since he was born to parents who were subjects of China, Wong was also a subject of China and … As the U.S. invaded or occupied countries in Asia and Latin America in the long century that followed, including China, familiar questions would arise about the rights, desirability and status of those immigrants following resources and relatives to America—and their children. His relatives were fierce defenders of slavery—especially his Uncle Henry, who as governor had overseen the hanging of the insurgent abolitionist John Brown, then served as a Confederate brigadier general in the Civil War. But when he returned this time, he ran into John H. Wise. And as has happened throughout American history, as the United States expanded its reach, brandished its power and gained the wealth of other nations, people from those countries started wanting to move to the place their nations’ wealth was going. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898) (“ WKA ”) controls and requires dismissal. An ABC (American Born Chinese) born in San Francisco, California in 1873 to parents permitted permanent residence in the U.S. but … March 28, 1898: Wong Kim Ark Wins Citizenship Case. He made merchants from China produce stacks of sworn statements, business documents and photographs at a time when none of that was easy or cheap to obtain. You may click on “Your Choices” below to learn about and use cookie management tools to limit use of cookies when you visit NPR’s sites. The customs chief ruled that Wong was not a U.S. citizen and thus immediately deportable under the Exclusion Act. The U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark. 'That said Wong Kim Ark has not, either by himself or his parents acting for him, ever renounced his allegiance to the United States, and that he has never done or committed any act or thing to exclude him therefrom.' United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898) “At common law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children, born in a country of parents who were its citizens, became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. The court ordered Wong Kim Ark to be discharged, upon the ground that he was a citizen of the United States. The same Supreme Court that decided Wong would later deny full constitutional rights to the peoples of the islands seized in the war with Spain. His parents had come to America decades earlier and spent years helping manage a grocery store in Chinatown. Children of immigrants remained in legal limbo until Wong Kim Ark fought for his citizenship—and won. In Wong Kim Ark, the Supreme Court confirmed that this right extended to the children of non-citizens as well. After all, they wrote, if they interpreted it any differently, they would be forced to “deny citizenship to thousands of persons of English, Scotch, Irish, German or other European parentage who have always been considered and treated as citizens of the United States.”, It does not seem the justices thought much about the wider context of the 14th Amendment. On returning from one trip, immigration officers barred his entry as an excludable Chinese person. He married and had four sons, but they remained in China. Wong Kim Ark gained legal support from the Chinese Six Companies and fought his case all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States. The United States would invade China several times over the next decades. China lay just beyond. Wong was 22 years old, with bright, broad features and his hair pulled back in a traditional queue. Even earlier, American railroad magnates had recruited Chinese workers to help build the Transcontinental Railroad. He took his case to the highest court in the land, the U.S. Supreme Court, … You can adjust your cookie choices in those tools at any time. Wong would never get to freely enjoy the benefits of citizenship. In the late 19 century, millions of people, including well over 300,000 Chinese people, came to the United States, where another Industrial Revolutionpromised work for all. Wong is believed to have finally gone back to China for good, dying there after World War II. Even the aggressively white supremacist justices—who just two years before had ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that segregation was constitutional because blacks were “inferior socially” and thus could be discriminated against at will—could not argue against the plain language of the 14th Amendment. From the earliest eras of migration to America there are people like Wong Kim Ark, a San Francisco-born restaurant worker in the late 1800s who was denied re-entry to his home, the U.S. Wong Kim Ark was born in the U.S. and had traveled to China several times. Then he wrote a poem to the man’s attorney in Los Angeles, gloating: “I’ve sent him back to China / Where he can eat his mice.”. Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356 (1886), was the first case where the United States Supreme Court ruled that a law that is race-neutral on its face, but is administered in a prejudicial manner, is an infringement of the Equal Protection Clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Some Chinese intended to live in the U.S. permanently, while others hoped to strike it rich and return home. Wong Kim Ark He was born in San Francisco to parents who also lived there 20 years. This information is shared with social media, sponsorship, analytics, and other vendors or service providers. Born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrants who were barred under the Chinese Exclusion Act from ever becoming U.S. citizens, Wong was denied re-entry to the United States after a trip to China, on the grounds that the son of a Chinese national could never be a U.S. citizen. Those policies were born out of Enlightenment ideals, as well as the realization that, as the legal scholar Katherine Culliton-González has written, “the history of modern nation-building and independence in the Americas is a history of immigration.”. The major Chinese immigrant aid society in the area gave Wong the services of its lawyer, Thomas D. Riordan. Wong Kim Ark’s case in the Supreme Court established citizenship for Chinese babies born in the U.S. By Pilar Marrero, Ethnic Media Services. Helen Zia: His name is Wong Kim Ark and every immigrant can thank him for the citizenship of their children in America. Anti-immigrant forces had been gearing up for a fight to win judicial sanction for their anti-Chinese laws, and Wong seemed like a perfect test case. 169 U.S. 649. Thinking he was free to travel, he’d sailed to China in November 1894 to see his family. 71 Fed. 382. At issue was whether or not his birth in San Francisco was enough to make him a citizen of the United States. United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898) In this case, Wong Kim Ark, the son of 2 resident Chinese aliens, claimed U.S. Wong Kim Ark, ever since his birth, has had but one residence, to wit, in California, within the United States and has there resided, claiming to be a citizen of the United States, and has never lost or changed that residence, or gained or acquired another residence; n d neither he, nor his parents acting for him, ever renounced his allegiance to the United States, or did or committed any act or thing to … Some called the immigrants an “unarmed invasion.” And those weren’t just words. Once, as the historian Erika Lee has written, he deported a longtime U.S. resident who was trying to re-enter the country to see his fiancée. A second term for the Trump Administration will likely result in further erosion of the legal immigration system and key protections granted by the 14 th amendment including birthright citizenship, immigrant rights experts warn. The law prohibited Chinese people from being naturalized as citizens, creating a permanent class of aliens on racial lines. The only question was whether it applied to everyone. The court decided in favor of Wong Kim Ark, under 14th amendment. By your broken logic children of foreign ministers would also have to be citizens of the United States because they are also born somewhere in the United States! In 1894, when he was returning from one of those visits, he was denied entry to the U.S. on the grounds that he was not a citizen. But John Wise left home not long after graduating from the University of Virginia to work as a customs inspector in San Francisco, and there were few African-Americans in California to discriminate against at the time. But there’s nothing in the majority opinion that suggests they were thinking about the fact that such a solution was available to the U.S. Congress because, before the Civil War, jus soli birthright citizenship had become nearly universal throughout North, Central and South America. Decided: March 28, 1898 ___ Syllabus; Opinion, Gray; Dissent, Fuller; Syllabus. Researcher Hannah Hallikainen contributed to this story. Speaking for them this week, Trump floated the possibility of ending birthright citizenship with an executive order—pretending, with no apparent basis, that he can overrule 120 years of Supreme Court precedent by presidential fiat. Wong Kim Ark was one of the many Chinese immigrants who had used U.S. laws to fight the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. But for Wong Kim Ark, America was home. Like Wong, his grandfather worked in a restaurant. Three decades later, Wong Kim Ark, the son of Chinese immigrants — born at 751 Sacramento St. in San Francisco — challenged the government’s refusal to recognize his citizenship. Such questions would continue to rile and enrage the ideological heirs of people like John H. Wise, who believe as he did that America should not have nearly so many immigrants, especially nonwhite ones. But Wong was born in San Francisco. They were not eligible to become citizens of the United States. His birth on U.S. soil conferred citizenship on him at birth. He was still required to show extra documentation—including the signatures of white people affirming his birthplace—every time he came and left the country. United States v. 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