The curious case of Wong Kim Ark

Lest anyone think this is about the paradox of getting one’s youthful mojo back after growing cerebrally older in a bizarre reverse-aging kind of way, or even about an Oriental Noah’s magnum opus during a biblical deluge, readers must be forewarned that this piece has nothing to do with tales of fantasy.

Instead, this real-life narrative has a singular, drab purpose: to explain the genesis of the birthright citizenship controversy that’s now rattling America to its core as a nation founded on immigration.

Curiously, Wong Kim Ark, the central character in this story, whose nativity controversy is forever etched in the annals of American history, was literally born under a cloud of uncertainty, if not misconception. Like a lingering case of factual dysentery, his year of birth was pegged at either 1870 or 1873, depending on one’s preferred weaver of history. What remains undisputed, however, is the fact that he was born in San Francisco, California to immigrant parents of Chinese nationality.

Mr. Wong and his parents, who were private merchants at the time, resided in California from the time of his birth until they departed for China sometime in 1890. While it was unclear whether his parents ever returned to America, Mr. Wong himself traveled back to the US in July 1890. He was allowed to reenter as a natural-born American citizen.

A few years later, Mr. Wong traveled once again to China for a temporary visit. On his return to America in August 1895, he was denied entry and detained for being a non-US citizen pursuant to the Chinese Exclusion Act, a law that prohibited Chinese nationals from entering the United States.

Mr. Wong immediately filed a habeas corpus petition with the federal district court in California, which ordered his release on 2 October 1895.

The US government then appealed the decision to the US Supreme Court, which became the landmark case of United States vs. Wong Kim Ark, 169 US 649 (1898).

In the lower court, the US government argued that since Mr. Wong resembled a duck, spoke like a duck, dressed like a duck, and worked like a duck, he was, in essence, a duck, and therefore not a US citizen.

Actually, the US District Attorney’s exact words were: “Because the said Wong Kim Ark has been at all times, by reason of his race, language, color and dress, a Chinese person, and now is, and for some time last past has been, a laborer by occupation,” accordingly, “he does not belong to any of the privileged classes” exempted from the Chinese Exclusion Act.

Luckily for the duck, er, Mr. Wong, the US Supreme Court, deferring to a long line of established English and common law jurisprudence on the subject, ruled that the first clause of the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution included the US-born offspring of foreigners domiciled in America unless they were enemy aliens or foreign agents or diplomats.

The curious thing was, based on the wording of the decision, the Wong case seemed to imply that automatic birthright citizenship applied only to children of foreigners “domiciled” in the US.

Does this mean that children of temporary visitors and undocumented immigrants are not included?

That’s for the learned jurists of the US Supreme Court to decide.