Birthright citizenship, as a common law principle, was a cornerstone of the American Republic at its founding.1 Like many “universal” rights at the time, it was presumed to apply to white people, routinely denied to enslaved people, and deeply contested for free people of color. After the Civil War, amid the effort to rebuild a fractured Union and answer the decades-long Black freedom struggle, Congress sought to affirm and extend the principle of birthright citizenship in the U.S. Constitution. In 1868, Congress recognized the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, extending citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil. The language of the Fourteenth Amendment was clear: “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.”2 This included—as the congressional record reveals—the children of immigrants regardless of race, nationality, or desirability of their parents.3

When Congress debated the wording of the Fourteenth Amendment, Chinese immigration was not at the forefront of legislators’ minds. They were primarily focused on granting citizenship to newly emancipated Black people while continuing to deny it to Native people living outside of America’s jurisdiction. Their ultimate choice of words reflected these desires. The first sentence of the amendment proclaimed, “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.”1

On July 4, 1895, U.S. flags fluttered alongside red Chinese lanterns outside 753 Clay Street, the newly claimed San Francisco headquarters of the Native Sons of the Golden State (NSGS).1 Inside, NSGS president Chun Dick rose to speak. Standing at five feet two inches with short-cropped black hair, he shared that at least fifty men in NSGS were birthright citizens and ready to vote, and that more Chinese American voters would follow.2 Chun Dick, members of the Chinese community in attendance, their guests, and journalists in the room reflected a new political reality: Chinese American children, born in the United States, were coming of age and claiming a place in U.S. politics. Chinese immigrants constituted the largest racial minority in the state, and while many were ineligible to vote, their children who could were organizing to do so. Therefore, this moment on July 4 in San Francisco marked a turning point.

On October 7, 1888, approximately 176 Chinese passengers arrived in San Francisco aboard the S.S. Belgic. They carried laborer return certificates—documents that, until just days earlier, had guaranteed their right to reenter. But on October 1, President Grover Cleveland had signed the Scott Act into law, abruptly voiding those certificates. Officially, the act barred only Chinese laborers from returning. In practice, however, Chinese merchants and U.S.-born children of Chinese parents also traveled with laborer return certificates. They, too, would now be denied readmission.

Following the Wong Kim Ark decision in 1898, ethnic Chinese, other Asians, and almost all individuals born on U.S. soil secured the right to jus soli birthright citizenship. They could not, however, secure recognition of their citizenship without documentation, the key that linked birth to birthright. At a time when birth registration was not common, ethnic Chinese were able to establish U.S. citizenship in two main ways: through an order by a U.S. District Court or certification by U.S. immigration authorities.1 However, this documentation did not settle questions of the holder’s identity, immigration or citizenship status. Immigration inspectors generally doubted testimony given in these cases and believed that it was used to obtain fraudulent documentation of lawful immigration or citizenship status.

On July 11, 1924, the Lincoln reached Angel Island, the desolate and remote location of the infamous immigration station in California. Aboard the ship were nine Chinese wives, hopeful that they would soon reunite with their spouses who had preceded them to the United States. Until then, despite harsh immigration laws, many Chinese women had been admitted to the country because they were married to noncitizen merchants or to American citizens. Building on coverture principles that a man’s care and comfort were so important that his wife’s status should follow his, Chinese husbands had often argued successfully that their right to reunite with their families took precedence over existing immigration laws, which excluded Chinese immigrants because of their race. It was these laws, they contended, that had forced many Chinese migrants into transnational marriages in the first place. Despite these precedents, the immigration officers who inspected the women on the Lincoln rejected them all, regardless of their age, education, and class.