United States of America v. Wong Kim Ark

The Chinese Exclusion Acts denied citizenship to Chinese immigrants. Moreover, by treaty no Chinese subject in the United States could become a naturalized citizen. Wong Kim Ark was born in San Francisco to parents who were both Chinese citizens who resided in the United States at the time. At age 21, he returned to China to visit his parents who had previously resided in the United States for 20 years. When he returned to the United States, Wong was denied entry on the ground that he was not a citizen.

This was a writ of habeas corpus issued October 2, 1895, by the District Court of the United States for the Northern District of California to the collector of customs at the port of San Francisco, in behalf of Wong Kim Ark, who alleged that he was a citizen of the United States, of more than twenty-one years of age, and was born at San Francisco in 1873 of parents of Chinese descent and subjects of the Emperor of China, but domiciled residents at San Francisco, and that, on his return to the United States on the steamship Coptic in August, 1895, from a temporary visit to China, he applied to said collector of customs for permission to land, and was by the collector refused such permission, and was restrained of his liberty by the collector, and by the general manager of the steamship company acting under his direction, in violation of the Constitution and laws of the United States, not by virtue of any judicial order or proceeding, but solely upon the pretence that he was not a citizen of the United States.

Because Wong was born in the United States and his parents were not “employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China,” the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment automatically makes him a U.S. citizen. Justice Horace Gray authored the opinion on behalf of a 6-2 majority, in which the Court established the parameters of the concept known as jus soli—the citizenship of children born in the United States to non-citizens.Because Wong was born in the United States and his parents were not “employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China,” the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment automatically makes him a U.S. citizen. Justice Horace Gray authored the opinion on behalf of a 6-2 majority, in which the Court established the parameters of the concept known as jus soli—the citizenship of children born in the United States to non-citizens.