In a majority opinion issued on March 28, 1898, Justice Horace Gray upheld the right of birthright citizenship for children born to alien immigrants, regardless of their parents’ legal status or race. The ruling reinscribed the principle of birthright citizenship in constitutional terms and clarified that it extended to the children of immigrants who were legally barred from the U.S. and prohibited from naturalization.
While United States v. Wong Kim Ark secured birthright citizenship for all children born in the U.S., it did not guarantee them equality within the nation’s borders. Nor did it guarantee women with birthright citizenship full protection from losing that citizenship. Over the next three decades, Congress employed naturalization law to strip women who married foreigners of their citizenship. The government also used the legislation as an anti-miscegenation measure, targeting women who married men of other nationalities.
Though legislation passed in the 1920s allowed wives whose husbands were eligible for naturalization to retain their citizenship, these measures didn’t apply to Asian men, who remained ineligible for naturalization. As a result, an unknown number of Puerto Rican, Mexican, European, Black and Asian women—including birthright citizens—lost their citizenship. It was only in 1931 that the law was amended, give women greater independent nationality rights.
Following the Supreme Court’s ruling in Wong Kim Ark, children and wives of Asian ancestry, including birthright and derivative citizens (individuals who derive their status as citizens from their spouses or naturalized or birthright parents), continued to be denied admission at the U.S. border. Immigration authorities routinely compelled these women and children to prove their identity, paternity, age, command of English and knowledge of American customs. Family members were asked upward of 100 questions in some cases—Wong’s sons included.
Litigation was expensive for family members in the U.S., who had to pay for and arrange legal support, as well as reconfigure their time, energy and emotions to testify for arriving relatives, with no guarantee of admission. Detention was particularly difficult for unaccompanied minors, who struggled to manage without their family and find enough food amid stiff competition with older children and adults at San Francisco Bay’s Angel Island.
“Wong Kim Ark’s victory in the Supreme Court was only the start of his family’s struggle to establish their right to U.S. citizenship,” says Frost. “Wong Kim Ark was also arrested and nearly deported by immigration officials in 1901, three years after he was the named plaintiff in the Supreme Court case establishing birthright citizenship.”