United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) saw the Supreme Court rule that a Chinese child born to parents who did not hold US citizenship was a citizen due to his having been born on American soil. It was the Court's first ruling on the birthright citizenship clause of the Constitution.The Civil Rights Act of 1866, passed immediately after the Civil War, granted citizenship to anyone born in the United States and not a citizen of another nation, excepting Native Americans. So as to prevent this from being repealed by Congress at a later date or struck down by the courts, it was written into the text of the 14th Amendment, which was ratified two years later. The idea of excluding Native Americans from citizenship was proposed by Wisconsin Senator James Doolittle. However, the phase "excepting Indians not taxed", included in the original text of the 1866 Civil Rights Act, was not included in the 14th Amendment and in Elk v. Wilkins (1884) the Court ruled that Native Americans were expressly excluded from citizenship (this was finally achieved by the Dawes Act in 1924).
Also in 1884, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in In re Look Tin Sing that a 14 year old Chinese youth both in California to Chinese immigrant parents was indeed a US citizen due to his birth. The Supreme Court did not review the ruling. Two other cases in Oregon four years later reached the same conclusion. In 1892 the 9th Circuit Court ruled that a Chinese man would be recognized as a US citizen if he was able to satisfactorily prove his birth on American soil. This ruling was also not reviewed by the Supreme Court. The Court's ruling in the Slaughterhouse cases in 1873 had held that the citizenship clause did not apply to citizens of foreign states born in the US, but it did not cover birthright citizenship and it is still a point of contention as to the correctness of the ruling.The United States had first established diplomatic ties with China in 1843 and Chinese immigration began with the Gold Rush in California several years later. These immigrants were considered a totally alien race and met with widespread discrimination and hostility; in 1878 Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act to completely bar Chinese immigration, but President Hayes vetoed it (it was passed again after he was out of office and made into law). Chinese already resident in the US could continue to, but they were considered non-citizens.
Wong Kim Ark was born c. 1870 in San Francisco to his merchant parents, who operated a business on Sacramento Street. Both of them were non-citizens nor eligible for citizenship. Wong spent most of his life working as a cook in various Chinese restaurants around San Francisco. He had spent some time in China as a child, but returned with an uncle when he was about 11 and worked as a dishwasher and cook in a mining camp in the Sierra Nevadas. Wong returned to China again for a time where he fathered a child and returned to the US alone because the Chinese Exclusion Act did not permit his wife to come with him. He made another trip to China in 1894-95 and fathered a second child.Wong returned to San Francisco in August 1895 and was detained on the grounds that he was not a US citizen and imprisoned for five months while his case was being tried. He was released on $250 bail and continued working as a cook while the case progressed. He was persuaded to file suit in US District Court. Judge William Morrow ultimately ruled that Wong was a US citizen due to his birth and that citizenship laws in the US were derived from English common law, which had traditionally recognized birthright citizenship; further, the Supreme Court had yet to make any ruling on the matter. The ruling was handed down on January 3, 1896 and the government immediately appealed to the Supreme Court.The government was nonetheless constrained by the fact that a presidential election was coming up and did not want the Court to make a ruling that could become an issue during the election. After it was over, oral arguments were held on March 5, 1897. If Wong was a citizen, then the Chinese Exclusion Act could not apply to him.
The Court handed down their 6-2 ruling on March 28, 1898. Justice Horace Gray wrote the majority opinion in which he wrote that Wong was indisputably a US citizen and this had always been understood to be the case in English common law, the basis of US law. Wong was born in the US and his parents were not officials or agents of the Chinese government. The fact that he had lived in China for periods of time did not alter his status.Chief Justice Fuller wrote the dissenting opinion. He argued that US legal traditions had necessarily diverged from English ones since US independence; as one example, it was recognized that Americans had the right to renounce their citizenship, something that did not exist in English law, and that US legal tradition had tended to believe a child inherits their parent's citizenship, and thus persons born to foreign-born parents did not become citizens "unless the fourteenth amendment overrides both treaty and statute."It was clearly recognized when the 1866 Civil Rights Act was drafted that it was meant mainly to grant citizenship to freed slaves and certain citizens of foreign-born parents had gained citizenship, but it was understood that Chinese were an "alien" race that could not assimilate into American society, and furthermore Chinese law itself did not recognize the right to renounce citizenship; doing so was a capital crime. Therefore, Fuller, argued, the question was not Wong's own citizenship, but the status of his parents.
Justice John Harlan argued that the Chinese were a foreign race that could not assimilate and without the Chinese Exclusion Act, they would have overrun the Western United States. Commenting on the Wong Kim Ark case shortly after the issuance of the Court's ruling in 1898, San Francisco attorney Marshall Woodworth wrote that "the error the dissent apparently falls into is that it does not recognize that the United States, as a sovereign power, has the right to adopt any rule of citizenship it may see fit and that the rule of international law does not furnish [by its own force] the sole and exclusive test of citizenship of the United States."An editorial published in the 3/30/98 San Francisco Chronicle proposed the idea of a constitutional amendment expressly limiting citizenship to those of the European race.Wong Kim Ark was detained a second time in October 1901 when he tried to enter the US from Mexico. It is not known why he traveled there, although Chinese laborers were present in that country. His potential deportation was dismissed on February 18, 1902. Wong apparently lived for a time in El Paso, Texas as a cook and was known to have made additional visits to China in 1904-05, 1913, and 1931, after which he did not return to the US. His date of death is not known.
>>18416616Whatever chud lmao
>>18416616Gee I can't imagine the modern day Chronicle running an editorial like that.
>>18416616"White" under the Census definition also includes Jews, Arabs, Mexicans etc so it's not like you'd get out of Perdition, /pol/.
Fuller was right btw.
What was that other USSC case where they ruled that Indians are not white?
>>18416584>United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898)But this case didn't existed, and if the SC or any other federal attempt to declard that "a born to parents who did not hold US citizenship is a citizen due to his having been born on American soil", then this is NULL AND VOID, and, of course, judges would be committing a delictious misdeed; they dont have any authority or right to make this declaration, the civil right act of 1866 and the 14th amendment absolutely don't allow any judge, politician or US citizen the right to do this.
>>18416584NULL, VOID as well as UNCONSTITUTIONAL; the supreme court don't have the auhority to make any foreign children born on the US soil a US citizen; it's unlawful and would blatantly violate the laws of the United States of America, and any judge could be rightfully sued for sedition and judicial activism if they even think of attempting to do this.Woe to any conservative organisation who don't make this clear.
>>18416973organization
>>18416584YELLOW PERIL DEPORT ALL CHINKS NOW
