Wong Kim Ark’s children: immigrant citizenship under Chinese exclusion

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that the pairings of citizenship and immigration, territory and mobility – pairings often considered distinct to or even opposite of one another – are critically interconnected. These links are particularly visible in the experiences of Chinese-born children of U.S.-born fathers. These children secured jus sanguinis birthright citizenship from their fathers, fathers who secured jus soli birthright citizenship under the Wong Kim Ark decision. They were ‘immigrant citizens’ who were allowed to immigrate to the United States only because they were U.S. citizens. Wong Kim Ark’s children, along with other Chinese Americans under exclusion, upend the assumed teleology of immigration preceding citizenship and the association of citizenship with territorial presence. Although they were targeted by U.S. immigration authorities, Chinese immigrant citizens fought for their right to migrate between China and the United States. In the process, they exposed some of the ways in which presumed distinctions between citizenship and alienage were blurred during Chinese exclusion, as well as the ways in which citizenship is legally constructed.

KEYWORDS:

• Chinese Exclusion
• migration
• U.S. Constitution Fourteenth Amendment
• birthright citizenship
• jus soli
• jus sanguinis

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Michael Bernath, John Cheng, Kirsten Fermaglich, Scott Heerman, Stephanie Hinnershitz, Andrea Louie, Natalia Molina, Mindy Morgan, Mae Ngai, David Thronson, Judy Wu, and participants in The Many Fourteenth Amendments Conference at the University of Miami. Many thanks to Sean Heyliger and John Seamans at the National Archives in San Bruno, the anonymous reviewers and the outstanding editorial staff at Citizenship Studies. Very special thanks to my excellent and persistent undergraduate research assistants Julia Lee and Trenton Sabo.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Of course, we should not uncritically accept U.S. claims of territory. There are other groups who also occupy interstitial relationships between citizenship, immigration and alienage, including especially historical and contemporary U.S. imperial subjects such as Filipinos, Puerto Ricans and Pacific Islanders. Debates about Pacific Islanders’ access to birthright citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment continue today. See, for example: Ngai 2004, 96–126; Perez 2008; Punzalan Isaac 2006, 23–47; Neuman and Brown-Nagin 2015; ‘Developments’ 2017.

Additional information

Funding

The author gratefully acknowledges support from the James Madison College, Michigan State University Faculty Development Initiative.