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You’ve probably never heard of Wong Kim Ark. I read a lot of stories for Asia American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month before stumbling across a mention of him. But there he is, his name on one of the most important Supreme Court cases in U.S. history. He’s especially a big deal if you were born in the USA to parents from China. Like me. And many of you.

Being born in the USA automatically made me a U.S. citizen. That’s all it took. My parents came from Gom Benn, and weren’t citizens. I didn’t marry a U.S. citizen. Didn’t take a test. Didn’t swear allegiance. A few months after my mother got off the boat from China, I was born. It wouldn’t have mattered if I was born a few minutes after she got off the boat. All it took was being born on U.S. soil. 

That’s birthright citizenship. It wasn’t alway so in the U.S. – especially not for the U.S.-born children of Chinese immigrants. And some would say it shouldn’t be so now.

“We’re the only country in the world where a person comes in and has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States…. It’s ridiculous…. And it has to end.”

Donald Trump, 2018

In the late 1890s, San Francisco-born Wong Kim Ark or WKA had to fight his deportation all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to confirm his U.S. citizenship. Just imagine, you’re U.S. born, you’ve got all your papers, and you travel to China. That was Wong Kim Ark, a Chinatown cook. Then upon his return to San Francisco in 1895, he was denied entry. 

The 14th Amendment to The Constitution, ratified in 1868, two years before WKA was born, establishes that “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.” 

Yet in the late-1890s, the U.S. government could still argue that a child born in America to China-born parents did not qualify for citizenship, saying they would be subject to the jurisdiction of China – nevermind that the same argument could be made about the U.S.-born children of Germany-born, England-born, Italian-born, Ireland-born and other foreign-born parents.  

Essentially WKA was told: Go Back to China; Go Back Where You Came From!

It couldn’t have been much of a surprise. It was hard for the Chinese in America. His mother and father came to San Francisco from Ong Sing Village in the Toisan area of China. They operated a grocery store. Wong Kim Ark was born in 1870  – one of only 500 Chinese children born in America until that time. This was one year after the Chinese helped complete the first Transcontinental Railroad. It was a time when anti-Chinese racism an violence was growing. Within a few years, mobs massacred dozens of Chinese in Los Angeles, San Francisco and elsewhere. 

When Wong Kim Ark was 7, his family returned to China. His parents would never return to America. As a 10-year-old, he came back to work as a dishwasher and cook. In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act to bar Chinese laborers from entering the U.S. That shouldn’t have prevented a U.S. citizen like Wong Kim Ark from going to China and coming back. In 1889, he returned to China, married and returned to San Francisco a year later, before the birth of his first son.

In 1894, he again returned to China, and again came back a year later. This time his return was blocked. In 1898, after a three-year legal battle, the Supreme Court ruled 6-2 in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark that he was indeed a citizen based on the 14th Amendment. It wasn’t just a victory for Wong Kim Ark. With this landmark ruling, he had won the right of birthright citizenship for every child born on U.S. soil, regardless of race, color, or ancestry. 

Did WKA live happily ever after? Of course not. Just three year later, immigration officials in Texas detained him for four months, threatening to deport him before once again agreeing that he was a citizen. His eldest son didn’t fare as well. WKA’s son tried to come to San Francisco in 1919 as a U.S. citizen born abroad to a U.S. citizen. Immigration officials said, nope, and denied his entry, citing “material differences” between his and his father’s testimony. 

WKA’s second, third and fourth sons fared better, gaining entry to the United States, although his third son later confessed to being a Paper Son. Late in his life, Wong Kim Ark is believed to have returned to China where he died.

His Supreme Court victory lives on, although not without more battles. Former President Trump has characterized birthright citizenship for the children of undocument and even documented immigrants as “ridiculous” and “crazy,” threatening to stop it. Of course, he also questioned the citizenship of Honolulu-born Barack Obama, whose father came from Kenya; and he doubted the citizenship of Oakland-born Kamala Harris, whose father came from Jamaica and mother from India.

Remember Wong Kim Ark.  

Note: This article is based on many sources but mostly the research of Amanda Frost, Bronfman professor of law and government at the American University Washington College of Law, and the author of You Are Not American: Citizenship Stripping from Dred Scott to the Dreamers.