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Professor Eileen Chow discusses the legacy of Wong Kim Ark on “They Call Us Bruce”

In Episode 270 of the “They Call Us Bruce” podcast, released on January 24, 2025, hosts Jeff Yang and Phil Yu welcomed Eileen Chow, Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at Duke University's Asian/Pacific Studies Institute, and Ava Chin, CUNY professor and author of Mott Street: A Chinese American Family’s Story of Exclusion and Homecoming. The main topic of discussion was the history, meaning, and legacy of birthright citizenship in the U.S., especially the legal precedent set by the 1898 Supreme Court decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark.

The following is excerpted from “They Call Us Birthright Citizenship.” It has been lightly edited for length.

Jeff Yang

“I wanted to kick things off in this conversation by first kind of calling out one of the things that led us to invite you, Eileen, in particular, to come on and talk. That's a post that you actually originally wrote back in 2018 that kind of skittered around social media at the time. It was talking about how birthright citizenship was square in the crosshairs of the Republican Party.

“...and then that post came back around again in November after the election, and you just reposted it again.

“...The post obviously goes over a little bit of the history of where the right came from and in our world as Asian Americans within it...

“...so, Eileen, if you could maybe talk a little bit about what led you to write that post and some of the content of it.”

Eileen Chow

“Talking about Wong Kim Ark is something that I've a great deal in my classroom. I teach on immigration history. I teach on Chinatowns history. Of course, I teach on the Chinese Exclusion Act. One of the ways I've always talked about it is, to the extent that people learn even a teeny bit about Asian American history, perhaps it is the Chinese Exclusion Act and the incarceration of Japanese Americans in World War II.

“...I should explain who Wong Kim Ark was. One of the reasons I brought him up is that the 14th Amendment, which gave us birthright citizenship is, of course, part of the kind of civil rights Emancipation Proclamation, to really solidify and turn into law the right of African Americans or former enslaved peoples to be U.S. citizens, right. And so kind of to reverse Dred Scott. The 14th amendment—before that, you know, that there was a lot of discussion about whether one should be jus sanguinis or jus soli, right? Do you have blood citizenship or soil citizenship—and one of the things that the 14th Amendment did was really to enshrine the idea of soil citizenship. You're born here and you're a U.S. citizen. But, as with all laws, they mean nothing until they're tested, even if they're passed.

“And the significance of the Wong Kim Ark moment is that he tested it like a good American. He was born here. He was a young chef in Oakland. His parents were Chinese who had lived in San Francisco and Oakland. They returned to China because of the incredibly unfriendly environment after 1882, after [the] Chinese Exclusion Act, and then the subsequent reinforcements of that law. And, like a good Chinese son, he went to visit them. He actually went once, came back, decided that he was really American, wanted to work in the U.S. He went back again to visit them. These are like, 6–month visits, right? 

“But then he was stopped at the port [by officials] saying, ‘now, it's the Chinese Exclusion Act. I mean, what do you mean? You're trying to come into this country?’

“He said, ‘I was born in the U.S., what do you mean, I can't come in?’ So that became then a rallying cry within the community, and it took it all the way up to the Supreme Court—and he won.

“The Supreme Court basically reaffirmed that in Wong Kim Ark versus the U.S., that he was born in the U.S. and therefore was in U.S. citizenship. But this is what really enshrined birthright citizenship: that this challenge to the 14th amendment led to the way that we think about the U.S. and jus soli.

“And one of the things that people always say, ‘well, other countries don't let you do that. You can't do this in China.’ But there are many, many countries that believe in soil rights. So it's not just the U.S.”

Be sure to listen to the full conversation at the They Call Us Bruce podcast (ep. 270: “They Call Us Birthright Citizenship”)