American Citizenship

SIGNIFICANCE: In numerous cases, the Supreme Court has generally supported Congress’s authority to determine who is eligible to be a US citizen. It has also interpreted the rights and responsibilities inherent within citizenship.

Background

Citizenship is legal membership in a country, which that conveys certain rights and requires certain responsibilities. Article I, section 8, of the US Constitution gives Congress the right to make laws outlining who is eligible to become a naturalized citizen of the United States and detailing how that eligibility can be established. In January 1790, President George Washington, in his annual message, expressed his concern over citizenship and naturalization issues, urging Congress to develop naturalization laws. In response to Washington’s concerns, Congress passed a law later that year providing for naturalization of free White aliens who had resided in the United States for at least two years and who made application for citizenship. Over the next few decades, Congress adjusted the residency requirement several times, but questions of citizenship persisted, especially regarding people of color. Only with the Fourteenth Amendment (passed in 1866 and adopted in 1868) was the constitutional standard of US citizenship established. Even then, citizenship issues would remain subject to much debate and Supreme Court review.

Eligibility for Citizenship

In answering the question of who is eligible for citizenship, the Supreme Court initially made interpretations based on the Naturalization Act of 1790. This led to one of the Court’s most infamous decisions, made in Scott v. Sandford (1857), also known as the Dred Scott case. Dred Scott, an enslaved African American who had been taken into the free states of Illinois and Wisconsin, sued for his freedom. Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, speaking for the court majority, ruled that no Black person, free or slave, was considered a citizen under the constitution, and therefore Scott was not eligible to bring suit in court. The highly controversial decision further inflamed tensions that led to the US Civil War (1861–65). Its overtly racist definition of citizenship was then superseded by the citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which states: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction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."

The Dred Scott decision was not the only one in which race or color was held as an appropriate test for citizenship, however. In Elk v. Wilkins (1884), the Court ruled that Elk, who had left the Winnebago tribe to live among White people in Omaha, Nebraska, could not be considered a citizen because Indigenous people were dependents of the state, in a ward-guardian relationship with the federal government. Native Americans were granted citizenship by Congress in 1924. This right to citizenship was affirmed by the Nationality Code of 1940.

Race also continued to inform questions of naturalized citizenship. In the 1922 case Ozawa v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that people who were born in Japan could never become citizens of the United States because they were not free, White immigrants as established in 1790 (or African or of African descent, as added to the law in 1870). In this case, the Court defined White as “Caucasian.” In Morrison v. California (1934), the Court again ruled that a person born in Japan could not become a US citizen. Before the Ozawa case, a number of Chinese and Japanese people had become naturalized US citizens. In the United States v. Thind (1922), a native of India who had been granted citizenship by an Oregon court was deemed ineligible for citizenship because he did not meet the definition of White. In this case, White was defined not as “Caucasian” but as being of European stock.

In 1943, an act of Congress expressly granted Chinese the right to naturalization. In 1945, people from India and the Philippines became eligible for US citizenship. Only in 1952 did the Immigration and Naturalization Act lift all racial bars to naturalization.

Although in the 1800s and early 1900s the Supreme Court often ruled that foreign nationals of color could not become naturalized citizens, it was willing to accept the citizenship of people of African or Asian heritage who were born in the United States. The 1898 decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark established the citizenship of a child born in the United States of Chinese parents. The Court held that this child’s citizenship was guaranteed under the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment. This principle of birthright citizenship even for children of foreign nationals would be upheld across other ethnic groups in later cases.

However, in 1998, when a petitioner attempted to use Wong Kim Ark to establish her citizenship in Miller v. Albright, the petitioner’s right to citizenship was denied. The petitioner was born in the Philippines to an American father and a Filipino mother. Although the father acknowledged paternity, he did not know of his daughter’s existence until she was twenty-one years old. The Court ruled that if a child wishes to claim US citizenship, paternity must be established or acknowledged by the time the child is eighteen years old.

Although interpretations of birthright citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment remained consistent into the twenty-first century, the concept did attract occasional controversy. In particular, some observers suggested that the wording of the citizenship clause contributed to problems with unauthorized immigration, as people entering the country illegally could then have a child in the US who would be guaranteed citizenship. Some conservatives called for an end to birthright citizenship, though the pathway to changing precedent around the Fourteenth Amendment was unclear.

Congress’s Right to Define Citizenship

In various decisions, the Supreme Court has supported the right of Congress to define citizenship and to control immigration and naturalization. In Chy Lung v. Freeman (1875), the Court held that legislation passed by states to control immigration was illegal, stating that only Congress had the right to pass laws concerning the admission and entry into the United States of foreign nationals.

In 1885 in the Head Money Cases, the Court placed Congress’s right to control immigration within the commerce clause of the Constitution. Although this right was challenged many times in subsequent years in cases involving the Chinese Exclusion Acts (1882–1902), the Court continued to uphold congressional responsibility for control of issues relating to immigration and naturalization. However, in deciding these cases, the Court did not always base its decisions on the commerce clause.

In the Chinese Exclusion Cases (1884–93), the Supreme Court stated that Congress might exclude immigrants even if they came from a country at peace with the United States. It said Congress was free to exclude any group that it believed could not assimilate into American culture and, therefore, might affect American peace and security.

In United States v. Ju Toy (1904), the Court indicated that Congress had the right to exclude anyone from the United States, even citizens. Ju Toy, returning to the United States from China, claimed that he was a naturalized citizen. However, the secretary of labor and commerce agreed with a lower court that Toy was not eligible for entry to the United States under the Chinese Exclusion Act. The Court decision supported the secretary’s actions. However, naturalized citizens’ rights were somewhat protected in Quon Quon Poy v. Johnson (1926), in which the Court stated that, when citizenship was challenged, the person claiming citizenship had the right to a fair and thorough administrative hearing. The 1933 decision in Volpe v. Smith confirmed Congress’s right to control immigration and naturalization, stating that its right to determine who could enter the United States was “no longer open to question.”

In Trop v. Dulles (1958), the Supreme Court affirmed that only Congress had the authority to decide citizenship matters. Trop, who had been stripped of his citizenship rights by a military court, sued to regain those rights. The Court ruled that only Congress, and not the military courts, could deprive citizens of their citizenship rights. However, in 1967, in Afroyim v. Rusk, it was held that not even Congress could strip a citizen of the right to citizenship. Citizenship was held to be a constitutionally protected right that could not be taken away without the assent of the citizen.

Citizenship Rights

The Supreme Court has ruled on the nature of citizens’ rights and responsibilities, as well as on the nature of citizenship itself. In ruling on cases involving who can be naturalized, the Court often helped all citizens understand what it means to be a US citizen.

In the Slaughterhouse Cases (1873), the Court ruled that all citizens have both national citizenship and state citizenship. The bulk of citizens’ rights are regulated by the states; national citizenship rights are outlined by the Constitution. For example, in Edwards v. California (1941), the Court ruled that a citizen’s right to move from state to state is a national right that is protected by the Constitution.

The Supreme Court examined various requirements of US citizenship in cases involving naturalized citizens. In Girouard v. United States (1946), the Court ruled that Girouard, who had refused to swear to defend the country, could become a naturalized citizen. In the opinion, Justice William O. Douglas wrote that taking up arms to defend the country is not a specific requirement of US citizenship. In Schneiderman v. United States (1939), the Court refused to revoke Schneiderman’s certificate of naturalization because he was a member of the Communist Party when he took the oath of citizenship. The Court said citizens should not be subjected to the idea of guilt by association. The Court also refused to revoke the citizenship of pro-Nazi Baumgartner in Baumgartner v. United States (1944), ruling that naturalized citizens had as much right to association as citizens born in the United States. This was a significant statement for the rights of naturalized citizens.

In Mandoli v. Acheson (1952), the Supreme Court ruled that a native-born citizen cannot lose citizenship for not returning to the United States during adulthood. Similarly, in Schneider v. Rusk (1964), the Court ruled that a naturalized citizen can retain US citizenship even if that citizen is out of the country for a long time. A native-born citizen would not lose citizenship for an extended stay outside the country, and a naturalized citizen has the same rights as a citizen born in the United States. Also, in Perkins v. Elg (1939), the Court ruled that a child who acquires US citizenship at birth does not automatically lose that citizenship if their parents take them abroad to live in another country.

Japanese Americans and World War II

During the administration of President Ronald Reagan, the US government apologized to Japanese Americans for its treatment of them during World War II. Part of this treatment consisted of rulings made by the Supreme Court. In Hirabayashi v. United States (1943), the Court declared that the March 21, 1942, act of Congress placing a curfew on people of Japanese ancestry was legal even though many of the people who were subjected to the curfew were US citizens. In Korematsu v. United States (1944), the Court held that the internment of Japanese Americans was legal and necessary for national security. This decision was reached in spite of the fact that many of those interred were native-born citizens.

Bibliography

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