Immigration Debates: Birthright Citizenship

Born in the USA

It's often said the United States is a nation of immigrants. But to an even greater degree, the US is a country built by the children of immigrants. Birthright citizenship is fundamental to this idea of America as a land of opportunity. For many immigrants, it's a place where—even if it is never quite your home—your children will thrive as Americans.

Yet history also shows us that from the moment of American Independence, the US Government has nearly always resisted attempts to expand citizenship. The citizenship guarantees in the 14th Amendment—designed to ensure the citizenship of Black slaves and their descendants—were part of a victor’s justice imposed on the reluctant South after bloody civil war.

“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.”

       – 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, Adopted July 9, 1868

It took another 30 years before the US Supreme Court confirmed that this citizenship guarantees also applied to the children of non-white immigrants. In 1898, the Justices found, in a 6-2 decision, that Wong Kim Ark,an American-born Chinese man who had been refused entry to the United States, was US citizen. He could not be barred from returning to California, despite the prohibition on Chinese immigration found in the Chinese Exclusion Acts. Although the bar against Asian immigrants becoming US citizens would not be lifted until 1943, after Wong Kim Ark, all US-born children were recognized as Americans.
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Paper Sons

The story of Chinese American citizenship in these intervening years is complicated: it involves lack, strategy and a certain amount of moral ambiguity. In 1906, earthquake and fire destroyed San Francisco's City Hall – and all the birth records it stored. This allowed many Chinese migrants to (fraudulently) claim to be American born, securing not only their own citizenship but also their Chinese-born children's right to arrive in the US as Americans. Many families then sold on this opportunity, creating a new generation of 'Paper Sons'. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese immigrants who arrived in California between 1882 and 1943 were paper sons or daughters: many concealed their true identity for their entire lives.

New Challenges to Birthright Citizenship

Before 2025, the last serious challenge to birthright citizenship was in 1942, when the Native Sons of the Golden West pushed for Japanese Americans to lose their US citizenship. But in the first days of his second term, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14160, seeking to restrict birthright citizenship to only the children of parents who are already permanent legal residents of the US.
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A decade ago, I was one of those parents. And as the immigrant mother of a newborn American, receiving my eldest son’s US passport in the mail felt like an anchor of possibility, tying me to a place where – only a year after arriving – I still felt like a bewildered stranger much of the time. I’m still grateful America welcomed my children from the moment they arrived in this world, regardless of who their parents were, or how we arrived here. That fundamental equity felt more meaningfully “American” to me than any flags or fireworks ever could.

It’s still reasonable to hope that the 14th Amendment will withstand this Trump-led assault on birthright citizenship. Even legal scholars who support his political intent seem skeptical that an Executive Order can dictate such change. Federal judges across the country have attempted to block the order from taking effect, using first injunctions and now class action suits. But in striking at birthright citizenship, not just fr undocumented migrants but for all new arrivals without a Green Card, the clear intention is to undermine the idea of “American” as an inclusive, expansive identity. One hundred and fifty years after our Chinatown tour protagonist, Look Tin Eli, petitioned the courts to recognize his own American citizenship, we are back where we started.

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