Rond Abdel-Fattah
Appearances
Up First from NPR
Who gets to be an American?
They're in the Capitol building because there was no Supreme Court building at this time.
Up First from NPR
Who gets to be an American?
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.
Up First from NPR
Who gets to be an American?
Many members of the court were on record as being hostile to Chinese immigrants. The argument took place over two different days, Friday, March 5th, 1897, and Monday, March 8th, 1897.
Up First from NPR
Who gets to be an American?
He would have argued, as he did in this brief, that the 14th Amendment, which guarantees citizenship to all born in the United States— has a caveat, or he would have said an exception, which is only those who are born in the United States and who are subject to its jurisdiction are automatically birthright citizens of the United States.
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Who gets to be an American?
And so Holmes Conrad would have grasped on to that language and said, 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.
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Who gets to be an American?
And so that means the son cannot automatically acquire citizenship based on birth.
Up First from NPR
Who gets to be an American?
Also said to the Supreme Court that the 14th Amendment of the U.S. 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,
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Who gets to be an American?
The Reconstruction Amendment should not be law. We should turn back the clock.
Up First from NPR
Who gets to be an American?
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.
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Who gets to be an American?
So the length of time between the oral argument and the ruling was over a year. So the case was argued March 5th and March 8th, 1897, and the final Supreme Court decision wasn't announced until March 28th, 1898. And that was an extraordinary long period of time. It would be extraordinary today. It was even more so then.
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Who gets to be an American?
So you can imagine the fear that Wong Kim Ark might have been feeling as month after month went by without a decision. And it's the sign the Supreme Court was really struggling with what to do in this case and how to decide it. And his lawyers were probably also greatly concerned. But they were brilliant lawyers.
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Who gets to be an American?
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. And the court heard that loud and clear and even noted that in its opinion.
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Who gets to be an American?
On March 28th, they issued a ruling, six to two, because they were down a member, so only eight members. And Justice Gray authors the opinion.
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Who gets to be an American?
Regardless of the immigration status of their parents are citizens of the United States.
Up First from NPR
Who gets to be an American?
The court focused on that language, that 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.
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Who gets to be an American?
It's a significant percentage of the country every year is born to immigrant parents.
Up First from NPR
Who gets to be an American?
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.
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Who gets to be an American?
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.
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Who gets to be an American?
Well, I would love to say it was a fully happy ending. His problems were not over in part because the U.S. government didn't fully give up. It gave up on that formal legal argument. But I feel in some ways they just switched the battle to other venues.
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Who gets to be an American?
So Wong knew that if he wanted to leave the country again, he would have to prove to everyone's satisfaction, all of these white immigration inspectors, that he was the man who'd won the Supreme Court case, that he was Wong K. Mark, that he was a citizen born in the United States.
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Who gets to be an American?
And that if they disbelieved him, he'd be stuck all over again in the steerage hold of a steamship trying to argue he could enter his country. And that must have made him very leery to even think about leaving the United States.
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Who gets to be an American?
He was living in El Paso, Texas, just a few years later after his win, in October of 1901, living and working there, and he was arrested and charged with being a Chinese immigrant, not a native-born American, a Chinese immigrant who was illegally in the United States. He had to post a $300 bond
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Who gets to be an American?
And it took months before he could convince these officials, I'm the guy who won the Supreme Court case establishing birthright citizenship. That's who I am. I am a citizen who gets to stay. This is the racial profiling of its time.
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Who gets to be an American?
So I'm guessing they had lots of contacts and networks who were aware of who was coming in and what was happening on those steamships.
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Who gets to be an American?
The group was known colloquially as the Chinese Six Companies.
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Who gets to be an American?
It was a group of representatives from all the different regions of China who were immigrants to the U.S., living in the U.S., who had made it in the United States. They had some money, they had some resources. And when the Chinese Exclusion Act went into effect, they mobilized, and they said, we are going to fight back.
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Who gets to be an American?
And so the Chinese six companies hired a lawyer for Wong Kim Ark, a well-known lawyer named Thomas Riordan, and he files a habeas petition on Wong Kim Ark's behalf.
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Who gets to be an American?
So the government doesn't give up, but the government immediately says, we're appealing this. And in fact, Wong Kim Ark is only allowed off that steamship because he posted a $250 bail. And those records are lost to history, but I'm guessing that the Chinese six companies produced that $250. He was kept for four and a half months, and he was only released on January 3rd, 1896.
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Who gets to be an American?
And Holmes Conrad was tall, patrician. He looked like exactly the kind of person that could be trusted to convey the law clearly and accurately to the justices. His reputation at the time was that he was an excellent lawyer, an excellent representative of the US government. But if you dig a little deeper into the background of Holmes Conrad, you see some really interesting personal details.
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Who gets to be an American?
So for at least a little period of time, a short period of time, Holmes Conrad too was not a citizen of the United States. He wouldn't have been able to vote or hold office. It's interesting to think that, at least for a brief period of time, he shared this issue with Wong Kim Ark about whether he would be considered a citizen of the United States.
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Who gets to be an American?
In a way, he wore a dual hat. He was hired by the Chinese six companies, paid by them to represent Wang, but the railroad, which he also worked for, clearly supported him.
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Who gets to be an American?
The second lawyer was a man named J. Hubley Ashton, who had worked for President Lincoln. And both men deeply believed in Lincoln and the Reconstruction era's mission of not just ending slavery, but establishing racial equality.
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Who gets to be an American?
He surely knew that if he lost, he would be forced to leave the United States, the country in which he'd been born and spent most of his life.