WASHINGTON – TheSupreme Courtin 1898 upheld the citizenship of a San Francisco-born son of Chinese citizens, despite a national backlash to the Chinese migrants who helped build the transcontinental railway and contributed other grueling labor to an expanding nation.
Forty-five years after Wong Kim Ark's victory, the justices were pushed – after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor – to overturn that ruling and revoke citizenship for Japanese Americans born in the United States.
Now, the court isagain being asked to decidewho is an American citizen by birth as immigration has returned as a major cultural and political divide.
The justices on April 1 will debate PresidentDonald Trump'spolicythat children of parents who are in the country illegally or temporarily are not entitled to citizenship, an issue that was central to his 2024 campaign.
The birthright citizenship case, Trump v. Barbara, shows the continuing tension in the country between America's foundation as a nation of immigrants and periods of backlash.
"I think that this country has always had an ongoing debate about what our immigration policies should be and this issue, for better or worse, has often been connected to those broader debates," said Amanda Tyler, a constitutional law scholar at University of California, Berkeley School of Law.
More:Will the majority-Catholic Supreme Court listen to the church on immigration?
Lawyer fighting Trump owes citizenship to 14th Amendment
Cecillia Wang, the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who is going up against the Trump administration at the high court, is well aware of the history – and her place in it.
Wang said her American citizenship was made possible by the 14thAmendment's birthright citizenship guarantee and by changes to laws that had restricted Asian immigration.
Without those changes, she said, her parents may not have been able to come to the United States from Taiwan to attend graduate school. And because they had not yet become naturalized citizens when she was born, her citizenship turned on the 14thAmendment.
"To have a Chinese American legal director of the ACLU standing up to defend what Wong Kim Ark and his bravery helped to establish just goes to show how Wong Kim Ark and the 14thAmendment have shaped the America that we all live in today," said Cody Wofsy, a lawyer with the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project.
What is the 14th Amendment?
The 14thAmendment − one of a trio of constitutional amendments adopted after the Civil War − overrode the Supreme Court's infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision that African Americans could not be citizens.
But the citizenship clause isn't limited to the status of Black people.
The amendment states: "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."
Some lawmakers opposed that language because they didn't want Chinese people born in the United States to become citizens, said Sandra Reirson, a constitutional law professor at Western State College of Law.
Fourteen years later, Congress passed a Chinese Exclusion Act, the first time Congress enacted legislation limiting immigration based on race or nationality.
That was the backdrop for the Supreme Court's consideration of Wong Kim Ark's status.
Who was Wong Kim Ark?
Born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrant parents who were barred from becoming citizens and later returned home, Wong traveled to China for a temporary visit in 1894.
When he sailed back to California, Wong was not allowed to set foot on U.S. soil.
The federal government argued to the Supreme Court that "Wong Kim Ark was trying to use the 14thAmendment to get around the intent that Congress had clearly signaled when enacting the Chinese Exclusion Act," said César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, an expert on immigration law at Ohio State University College of Law.
But the court ruled that the 14thAmendment's protections extend to the children of "resident aliens" of "whatever race or color, domiciled within the United States."
Rierson, who has written for the Georgetown Immigration Law Journal about the role of white supremacy in the birthright citizenship debate, said it's notable that the Supreme Court sided with Wong Kim Ark despite the Chinese Exclusion Act.
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"The case was decided at a time when there was a tremendous degree of nativism and racism directed against the Chinese," she said, "and the Supreme Court nevertheless said `That has nothing to do with this. This is about what the 14thAmendment means.'"
Birthright citizenship again debated during WWII
A similar argument was made against Japanese Americans during World War II.
In 1942, as the government was forcibly relocating and incarcerating Japanese Americans on the West Coast, a nativist group hoped to revoke the citizenship of Japanese Americans born in the United States. The lawyer for the Native Sons of the Golden West called the Wong Kim Ark decision "one of the most injurious and unfortunate decisions every rendered."
"A Japanese born in the United States is still a Japanese," the group argued in a filing.
The 9thCircuit Court of Appeals rejected the challenge in the middle of oral arguments, even while ruling against the civil rights of Japanese American citizens in other cases considered at the same time.
And the Supreme Court declined to get involved.
Tyler, who detailed the history of the case in a filing opposing Trump's policy, said she wanted to "put the current case in context against the long arc of what has been a long-accepted principle – that of birthright citizenship."
Even when the federal government was "literally incarcerating Japanese Americans based on nothing other than their ancestry," Tyler said, "no one seriously disputed the citizenship of Japanese Americans born on United States soil."
Trump campaigned on limiting birthright citizenship
In the current case, Trump argues the 14thAmendment has long been misinterpreted, creating a powerful incentive for immigrants to enter the country illegally.
Curbing immigration − Trump's top domestic priority − dominated every night of the 2024 Republican National Convention and was a major focus of his ad campaign.Trump signed an executive orderon the first day of his second term directing federal agencies not to recognize the citizenship of babies born in the U.S. who do not have at least one parent who is an American citizen or lawful permanent resident.
More:Trump wants to end birthright citizenship. How many people would that impact?
During his acceptance speech, Trump said a "massive invasion" at the southern border had spread misery, crime, poverty, disease, and destruction throughout the United States.
"Today, our cities are flooded with illegal aliens," he said. "Americans are being squeezed out of the labor force and their jobs are taken."
Waxing and waning on immigration
Americans have gone back and forth on immigration, depending in part on the strength of the economy and on how many immigrants are coming in, said Stephen Yale-Loehr, a longtime immigration law scholar and retired Cornell Law School professor.
The last time the country saw immigration at the current scale was in the early 1900s, when Congress responded by imposing quotas.
Yale-Loehr also noted that Trump's campaign promise to restrict immigration came after PresidentJoe Bidenallowed more than two million migrants into the country under humanitarian programs.
"When citizens see that number of immigrants coming to the United States in such a short period of time, they start to worry," he said.
Competing strains of American identity
Biden, who faced record numbers of migrants at the border, was trying to address the fact that both legal and illegal immigration is rising globally because of civil conflicts and climate change. And with the issue being so politically explosive, the two parties haven't been able to agree since 1990 on how to manage the situation.
"If we had a functioning immigration system," Yale-Loehr said, "we could better deal with the numbers of people who are trying to come to the United States."
Reirson, the Western State College of Law professor, said the nation's founding ideals of pluralism and equal opportunity have often clashed with an undercurrent of nativism and white supremacy.
"All along," she said, "we have these competing strains for American identity that kind of wax and wane over time."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:Trump wants to limit birthright citizenship. What history has shown.
WASHINGTON – TheSupreme Courtin 1898 upheld the citizenship of a San Francisco-born son of Chinese citizens, despite a na...
