Wong Kim Ark v. United States

Significance: The US Supreme Court held that children born in the United States, even to temporary sojourners, are subject to US jurisdiction regardless of race or nationality.

Wong Kim Ark was born in San Francisco in 1873. His parents were Chinese subjects permanently domiciled in the United States. In modern terminology, they would have been called “resident aliens.” They had been in business in San Francisco and were neither employees nor diplomatic agents of the government of China. In 1890, they returned to China after many years in the United States. Wong also went to China in 1890, but he returned to the United States the same year and was readmitted to the country on the grounds that he was a US citizen. In 1894, he again went to China for a temporary visit but was denied readmission to the United States on his return in August, 1895. The government’s position was that under the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, a Chinese born to alien parents who had not renounced his previous nationality was not “born or naturalized in the United States” within the meaning of the citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. If the government’s position was correct, Wong was not a citizen of the United States and was not entitled to readmission to the country. Wong brought a habeas corpus action against the government in the District Court for the Northern District of California. That court’s judgment in favor of Wong was appealed to the US Supreme Court by the government.

The Decision

Justice Horace Gray wrote the Supreme Court’s opinion for a 6-to-2 majority. Gray’s argument begins with the assumption that the citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment has to be read in the context of preexisting law. The Court’s opinion begins with a long review of citizenship practices and legal customs. The US tradition had been to distinguish between “natural-born” and naturalized citizens. This distinction came from English common law. In England, for hundreds of years prior to the American Revolution, all persons born within the king’s realms except the children of diplomats and alien enemies were said to have been born under the king’s protection and were natural-born subjects. This rule was applied or extended equally to the children of alien parents. Moreover, the same rule was in force in all the English colonies in North America prior to the revolution, and was continued (except with regard to slaves) under the jurisdiction of the United States when it became independent. The first American law concerning naturalization was passed in the First Congress. It, and its successor acts, passed in 1802, assumed the citizenship of all free persons born within the borders of the United States. It was not until the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act that any US law had sought to alter the rule regarding natural-born citizens.

On the European continent, however, the law of citizenship was different. Most other European countries had adopted the citizenship rules of ancient Roman law. Under the Roman civil law, a child takes the nationality of his or her parents. Indeed, when Wong Kim Ark v. United States reached the Supreme Court, the government argued that the European practice had become the true rule of international law as it was recognized by the great majority of the countries of the world.

This was the historical and legal context for the Fourteenth Amendment’s language “All persons born or naturalized in the United States. . . .” According to Justice Gray, the purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to extend the rule providing citizenship for natural-born persons to the freed slaves and their children. The amendment did not establish a congressional power to alter the constitutional grant of citizenship. Gray’s opinion reviews many of the Court’s prior opinions upholding the principle. The Chinese Exclusion Act, passed after the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, could not affect the amendment’s meaning, according to the majority, and therefore did not affect the established rule of natural-born citizenship. The grant of constitutional power to Congress to “establish a uniform rule of naturalization” did not validate the Chinese Exclusion Act. Wong, as a natural-born citizen, had no need of being naturalized. The Court held that “Every person born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, becomes at once a citizen of the United States, and needs no naturalization.” Moreover, the majority held that Congress’s power of naturalization is “a power to confer citizenship, not to take it away.” In other words, Congress had the power to establish uniform rules for naturalization but could not alter the plain-language and common-law meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship clause.

Dissents

The dissenting justices saw the case differently. Chief Justice Melville Fuller wrote an extensive dissent in which Justice John Marshall Harlan joined. In their view, the common-law rule sprang from the feudal relationship between the British crown and children born within the realm. American law was not bound to follow the common-law rule because there were differences between “citizens” and “subjects.” In a republic such as the United States, citizenship was a status created by and conferred by the civil law. Because nothing in US law had explicitly endorsed the common-law principle of citizenship, the Fourteenth Amendment did not have to be read so as to include it. Fuller argued that Congress is free to pass statutes that define and interpret the citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In the dissenters’ view, then, the Chinese Exclusion Act could constitutionally limit the reach of the phrase “born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” Under this interpretation, Wong would not have been a citizen, and his exclusion would have been constitutional. The Court’s decision in this case was important because it stripped the government of the power to deny the citizenship of persons born in the United States of alien parents.

Bibliography

Chan, Sucheng. Entry Denied: Exclusion and the Chinese Community in America, 1882–1943. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1991. Print.

McKenzie, Roderick Duncan. Oriental Exclusion: The Effect of American Immigration Laws, Regulations, and Judicial Decisions upon the Chinese and Japanese on the American Pacific Coast, 1885–1940. Miami: HardPress, 2006. Print.

Rojas, Leslie Berestein. "Who Was Wong Kim Ark? How a Son of Immigrants Helped Define Who is a US Citizen." Multi-American. Southern California Public Radio, 19 Jan. 2011. Web. 14 May. 2015.

Wang, Karin. "Wong Kim Ark, Constitutional Citizenship & Asian Americans." Asian Americans Advancing Justice. Advancing Justice-LA, 2011. Web. 14 May. 2015.

Young, Mitchell. Immigration. Detroit: Greenhaven, 2008. Print.