Who gets to be an American citizen?

The 14th Amendment guaranteed equal citizenship after the Civil War, but who exactly counted as a citizen? Today on the show, the story of Wong Kim Ark, a man born in San Francisco to Chinese parents, whose Supreme Court case defined birthright citizenship more than a century ago. To access bonus episodes and listen to Throughline sponsor-free, subscribe to Throughline+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/throughline. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This message comes from the Southern Environmental Law Center. No one voted for dirty air and water. That's why S E L C is fighting back to defend the healthy environment everyone depends on. Because it's not political, it's fundamental. Learn more at S E L C dot org.

• 0:20Rund Abdelfatah?

  This is America in Pursuit, a limited run series from Throughline and NPR. I'm Randa Abdelfatah. Each week, we bring you stories about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the U.S. that began 250 years ago. As we've been talking about in this series, who is American and what it means to be American have always been in flux. And today, that's still true. Just this month, the Supreme Court started hearing oral arguments that those born in the United States are automatically U.S. citizens, regardless of their parents' immigration status. The court will issue a decision this summer, and either undo birthright citizenship or

• 1:04Rund Abdelfatah?

  uphold the precedent set over a century ago by another Supreme Court case, the case that started it all.

• 1:13Speaker 02

  The question to be determined is whether a person born within the United States, whose father and mother were both persons of Chinese descent and subjects of the Emperor of China, but at the time of the birth were both domiciled residents of the United States, is a citizen.

• 1:32Rund Abdelfatah?

  Today, Rantin and I bring you the story of Wong Kim Ark, the man behind the Supreme Court case that made birthright citizenship the law of the land. Until now.

• 1:45Rund Abdelfatah?

  That story, right after a quick break.

• 1:59Speaker 00

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This is a message from This is History with Dan Jones. In the new series, Dan tells you the extraordinary origin story of England's most iconic royal family, the Tudors. To find out more, listen to This is History: The Tudors, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 2:20Speaker 00

  This message comes from Pushkin Industries. In his new audiobook, The American Way of Killing, Malcolm Gladwell asks where America's gun violence epidemic came from, from the Second Amendment to shooting ranges to ER doctors. Get it wherever audiobooks are sold.

• 2:35Speaker 03

  The 2026 midterm elections are upon us. On November 3rd, voters will determine what the next two years of their local leadership and the balance of national government will look like. Listen to the NPR News Now podcast for all the updates you need ahead of and after November 3rd from NPR News.

• 3:03Rund Abdelfatah?

  It all began when Wong Kim Mark, a San Francisco-born cook, tried to return to California after visiting China, his parents' homeland.

• 3:13Speaker 04

  I think when he saw San Francisco Bay emerge out of what was likely the foggy morning.

• 3:18Rund Abdelfatah?

  This is Amanda Frost, professor of immigration law and author of You Are Not American: Citizenship Stripping from Dretzky to the Dreamers.

• 3:28Speaker 04

  He must have been thrilled to think, I'm finally back home and I can get off this boat and go back to my home in San Francisco.

• 3:36Rund Abdelfatah?

  But that's not what would happen. To Wong Kim Mark's surprise, a US Customs agent declared that he was not allowed to get off the ship and set foot onto US soil.

• 3:46Speaker 04

  At this point, the Chinese Exclusion Act was in effect. And so if you were a Chinese laborer, you were not allowed to enter.

• 3:54Rund Abdelfatah?

  Wong Kim Mark argued with the customs official.

• 3:57Speaker 04

  He said, yes, I'm a laborer, I'm a chef, but I'm a citizen. And here's the proof. He had his certificates. He knew that he was born in the United States and that meant he was a US citizen.

• 4:10Rund Abdelfatah?

  Wong Kim Ark was born in the US, but his parents were not. They came to the United States, like many other Chinese immigrants, looking for work.

• 4:19Speaker 05

  They opened what was basically a grocery store in San Francisco. And at some point in the early 1870s, the records aren't totally clear, they welcomed a new baby into the world, Wong Kim Ark.

• 4:32Speaker 04

  All the time he was in the United States, he lived within about a quarter mile of the place where he was born. At first, Chinese immigrants were welcomed. They were helping to build America. They were building the Transcontinental Railroad, and they were key. They were extraordinarily important. And they helped to mine the gold and the precious metals in backbreaking, difficult work throughout the West. But then, as so often we see in this nation, there was an economic downturn, and they were scapegoated and blamed for the lack of jobs and the poor economy.

• 5:06Speaker 04

  This country was coming out of the Civil War, the end of slavery. And the white workers were told the Chinese are the new slaves, and they will undermine your work, because they will take jobs at lower pay. They're willing to work in slave-like conditions. And they use that as an excuse for violence and their attempt to drive out Chinese immigrants from the United States.

• 5:31Rund Abdelfatah?

  1877. A group of angry men, driven by the idea that Chinese immigrants were taking their jobs, set buildings on fire and killed four men in Chinatown in San Francisco. Anti-Chinese violence had landed on the doorstep of Wong Kim Ark's family. Eventually, his family packed up their store and moved back to China.

• 5:59Rund Abdelfatah?

  When Wong Kim Ark's family left the United States after the 1877 anti-Chinese riots in San Francisco, they never came back. But he did, at age 11. And during that time, Wong Kim Mark saw anti-Chinese sentiment cemented into law. In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred Chinese laborers from immigrating or naturalizing. And then they passed the Page Act, which barred all Chinese women except merchants' wives, and the Geary Act, that required all Chinese immigrants to carry identification paperwork.

• 6:39Speaker 04

  So there was this sense that the Chinese wouldn't assimilate. But of course, it was the laws and policies and practices of the nation that made it so difficult for them to assimilate.

• 6:47Speaker 04

  But that also made it easy to view them as others, as people who are not like us.

• 6:51Rund Abdelfatah?

  In the face of all this cynophobia, Wong Kim Mark continued to live in San Francisco.

• 6:58Speaker 04

  He lived in the United States until he was about 20, when he went back to China, because he wanted to find a wife. He wanted to get married.

• 7:05Rund Abdelfatah?

  And because of the Page Act, that meant going back to China. So he did. He got married and started a family. But he didn't stay long. After several months, he returned to the United States to work. And he repeated this process again a couple of years later, going back to China to visit his wife and his growing family. And that's what brings us back to that fateful day in the San Francisco Bay.

• 7:34Speaker 04

  Unbeknownst to Wong, while he was in China, the US government had decided it wanted to bring a test case challenging birthright citizenship.

• 7:43Rund Abdelfatah?

  Birthright citizenship.

• 7:45Speaker 04

  Particularly for the children of Chinese immigrants. So they chose him. And they didn't let him get off that boat.

• 7:54Rund Abdelfatah?

  And his case made its way from a California District Court all the way up to the Supreme Court. The entire case rested on the interpretation of a single sentence in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. An amendment added after the Civil War to guarantee newly emancipated Black Americans equal citizenship and protection under US laws.

• 8:16Speaker 06

  14th Amendment, Section 1.

• 8:18Speaker 07

  All persons born or naturalized in the United States

• 8:22Speaker 08

  and subject to the jurisdiction thereof

• 8:23Speaker 07

  jurisdiction thereof

• 8:25Speaker 06

  are citizens of the United States

• 8:27Speaker 07

  and of the state

• 8:28Speaker 08

  wherein they reside.

• 8:29Speaker 06

  and of the state wherein they reside.

• 8:32Rund Abdelfatah?

  That phrase, jurisdiction thereof, it is key because the court had to decide what makes a person a US citizen. Do all people born on US soil fall under its jurisdiction, its laws? Or is jurisdiction about where your loyalties lie?

• 8:52Speaker 05

  On March 5th, 1897, on a Friday afternoon, the day came. The case of United States versus Wong Kim Ark began.

• 9:03Speaker 04

  They're in the Capitol Building because there was no Supreme Court Building at this time. And they were in front of these nine black-robed men with Chief Justice Fuller in the middle, who was very short, so he was sitting on an elevated chair.

• 9:16Speaker 05

  Chief Justice Melville Weston Fuller was the leader of the nine justices that made up the Supreme Court. And let's just say, they had a bit of a reputation.

• 9:25Speaker 10

  The Fuller Court is known among constitutional scholars as one of the most racist iterations of the Supreme Court that has existed across the span of American history. They're responsible for Plessy versus Ferguson.

• 9:41Speaker 04

  Many members of the court were on record as being hostile to Chinese immigrants.

• 9:52Rund Abdelfatah?

  The lawyer for the US government argued...

• 9:54Speaker 04

  Well, Wong Kim Ark, sure, he was born in the United States. We can't refute that. But we do not think he was subject to the jurisdiction of the United States because his parents were loyal to the Emperor of China, and so was their son by sort of automatic transmission. And so that means the son cannot automatically acquire citizenship based on birth.

• 10:16Speaker 05

  But then he made a bigger, bolder claim.

• 10:19Speaker 04

  That the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution is itself unconstitutional. And his reason for that was he said the South was coerced into ratifying the 14th Amendment. In 1868, and therefore it was never validly a part of the Constitution. And we can see in that argument, of course, that he's trying to litigate the Civil War. He's trying to say, "The Reconstruction Amendment should not be law. We should turn back the clock."

• 10:44Rund Abdelfatah?

  He's making this case in front of the Supreme Court, over 30 years after the ink on the 14th Amendment had dried.

• 10:52Speaker 04

  And in fact, the lawyers for Wong Kim Ark call him on that. And they say in their brief, "This nation spilled so much blood to fight for the end of slavery and to establish the 13th and 14th and 15th Amendments and change our nation and change our Constitution, and you should not accept the argument that these amendments are invalid."

• 11:13Speaker 05

  The government made its argument. Then it was Wong Kim Ark's lawyers' chance to counter.

• 11:19Speaker 10

  Well, in very simple terms, Wong Kim Ark's lawyers have two main claims.

• 11:27Speaker 05

  Julie Novkop is the co-author of "American by Birth: Wong Kim Ark and the Battle for Citizenship."

• 11:33Speaker 10

  One is that this principle of birthright citizenship is a longstanding principle in common law, not just American common law, but English common law.

• 11:44Speaker 05

  Their second claim is that this common law principle was adopted in the 14th Amendment.

• 11:50Speaker 10

  And therefore, if you look at the history of this principle, if you look at how it has played out over time, there's plenty of grounding there to support the idea that the descendants of Chinese born in the United States are entitled to birthright citizenship.

• 12:09Speaker 04

  They were brilliant lawyers, and they told the Supreme Court, "If you rule for the government, that the children of immigrants are not citizens, you will take away citizenship from hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people, including lots of white people."

• 12:24Rund Abdelfatah?

  Millions of immigrants from Europe and around the world had moved to the US in the 1800s, so the Supreme Court was suddenly having to address a fundamental issue, one that would have ripple effects beyond the children of Chinese immigrants, like Wong Kim Ark.

• 12:42Speaker 05

  It took over a year, but finally, the Supreme Court issued a ruling in the case of U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark.

• 12:50Speaker 11

  The fact, therefore, that acts of Congress or treaties have not permitted Chinese persons born out of this country to become citizens by naturalization cannot exclude Chinese persons born in this country from the operation of the broad and clear words of the Constitution. All persons born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States. Justice Gray.

• 13:24Speaker 04

  The court focused on that language. It said "all persons." This is intended to apply to everyone. And it's not intended to be so restrictive as to take away citizenship or bar citizenship from the children of immigrants. And remember, the United States is a nation of immigrants. It's not like there's just a few people who are born to non-citizen parents. It's a significant percentage of the country every year is born to immigrant parents.

• 13:47Speaker 05

  Quick note. "All persons" did not necessarily include Native Americans. And that's because tribes recognized by the U.S. government were considered sovereign nations with their own governments and court systems.

• 14:00Speaker 04

  And then the court threw in at the very end, they said, "And if we were to rule any other way, we would take citizenship away from lots of children of not just the quote-unquote "obnoxious Chinese," which is how the court often referred to this group, but also the children of English immigrants and German immigrants and French immigrants.

• 14:23Speaker 04

  That, I think, also pragmatically led them to say, "No, Wong Kim Ark, we're ruling for you, not so much because we're sympathetic to children of Chinese immigrants, but because we can't undo the citizenship of the children of immigrants in this country."

• 14:41Rund Abdelfatah?

  Wong Kim Mark couldn't undo anti-Chinese hate, but he did win his case. He was recognized by the US government as a citizen. He could finally go back to his life in San Francisco. But life was far from easy. He was actually arrested again in 1901 for being a suspected Chinese immigrant and spent months in detention before convincing officials that he was a US citizen. Wong Kim Mark returned to China in his 60s and never came back.

• 15:21Rund Abdelfatah?

  That's it for this week's episode of America in Pursuit. If you want to hear more about Wong Kim Mark's story, check out the episode, "The History of Birthright Citizenship", and make sure to join us next week when we dive into how the US begins to expand beyond its shores.

• 15:38Speaker 12

  It becomes harder to think of the United States as just a contiguous collection of states because it's quite obvious that the US flag is flying in all sorts of places.

• 15:48Rund Abdelfatah?

  The story of the beginning of the US empire and how we went from the United States to calling our country "America", that's next week. Don't miss it.

• 16:02Rund Abdelfatah?

  This episode was produced by Kiana Moradam and edited by Christina Kim with help from the Throughline production team. Music as always by Ramtin Arablouei and his band, Drop Electric. Special thanks to Julie Kane, Irene Naguchi, Beth Donovan, Casey Miner, and Lindsay McKenna. We're your hosts, Rande Abdelfattah

• 16:23Speaker 12

  and Ramtin Arablouei. Thank you for listening.

• 16:43Speaker 00

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This is a message from Dr. Billions. It was supposed to be a simple surgery, but the pain just kept getting worse. This is the story of hundreds caught in a nationwide ring of medical fraud. Who is behind this web of deception? Find out on Dr. Billions, wherever you're listening to this.