How Wong Kim Ark’s legacy reignited the fight for birthright citizenship

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They had seen old photos of their grandparents, but not much else. “For most of our lives, we just knew very cryptic information,” Sandra said. Only in 2011, at her father's funeral, did Sandra find a clue about her family's legacy. Among the remembrances was a newspaper clipping that alluded to a great-grandfather who fought an important legal battle. “I was filled with surprise, confusion, curiosity,” Sandra recalled, having perused the article with interest. But the story drifted into the background of Sandra's busy life. She was a mother, after all, and her hands were full raising two kids, looking after her mom and working part-time. That changed, though, when Republican Donald Trump began his first successful bid to be United States president in 2015. In August of that year, Trump debuted plans to repeal a long-established constitutional right: birthright citizenship. Established under the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution, that principle guarantees citizenship to virtually all children born on US soil. It was also the centrepiece of a 19th-century court case concerning a man whose name would become synonymous with birthright citizenship: Wong Kim Ark. He is Sandra's great-grandfather. Trump's campaign to end birthright citizenship has catapulted Sandra and her siblings into the national spotlight, transforming them into ambassadors for their family's legacy. “It was a bit strange because we haven't really even processed the information,” Sandra said. On June 30, the US Supreme Court upheld the precedent that Wong set back in 1898, protecting the right to citizenship even for children born to immigrants. Wong's case was cited in the decision more than 100 times. But Trump has pledged to keep fighting birthright citizenship, as part of his crackdown on immigration. He called on Congress to amend the Constitution, and this week, Trump even asked the Supreme Court to reconsider its decision. His campaign poses the most dire threat to Wong's legacy in more than a century. When Wong was born in 1873, the Fourteenth Amendment was barely five years old. It had been ratified after the US Civil War to rescind a Supreme Court ruling that denied citizenship to Black people. The amendment cemented the idea that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States". But children like Wong would test the limits of the Fourteenth Amendment. Born to Chinese parents in San Francisco, Wong grew up in a time gripped by anti-Chinese sentiment. The California Gold Rush had turned San Francisco into a bustling harbour, with wooden streetcars rattling down its cobblestones and steamships crowding its harbour. But some workers had come to see the city's immigrant population as competition. Anti-immigrant riots broke out up and down the western seaboard. In 1877, for instance, mobs in San Francisco attacked Chinese-owned businesses, leaving multiple people dead. A pair of Chinese men were among the casualties: They were found in a burned-out laundry. Then, as now, anti-immigrant sentiment coincided with an increase in arrivals. When Trump returned to office in January 2025, some 15.8 percent of US residents were foreign-born, according to the Pew Research Center. That marked the highest level since the previous peak of 14.8 percent in 1890, when Wong was living in San Francisco's Chinatown. Carol Nackenoff, co-author of the book, American by Birth: Wong Kim Ark and the Battle for Citizenship, believes that the surge in immigration was key in creating the conditions for Wong's court battle. “I think that's a driver of waves of anti-immigrant sentiment,” Nackenoff said. Over the course of Wong's childhood, the US passed laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act, prohibiting nearly all Chinese immigrants from arriving in the country. Nackenoff said Wong would have been well aware of such discriminatory laws. But he likely would not have questioned his identity as an American, albeit one who was treated as a second-class citizen. “He certainly would have known he didn't have the same rights as a white American,” Nackenoff said. “But until the early 1880s, the prevailing understanding in the United States was that anybody born in the United States was a citizen — that citizenship followed soil, not blood.” Wong, a young man with a boyish face who wore his hair in a traditional Qing-style braid, grew up to be a labourer and cook in San Francisco. But US laws at the time restricted the entry of single Chinese women; immigration authorities had the right to turn them away if they were suspected of "lewd or immoral" business. So Wong was forced to travel back and forth to China to find a wife and establish a family. The trips also allowed him to visit his parents, who moved back to Asia in 1889. In August 1895, Wong embarked on what would become his most fateful trip back to San Francisco. He was still young, in his early 20s. But as his steamship, the SS Coptic, pulled into the harbour, Wong found himself face to face with a well-known anti-immigrant advocate: customs official John Wise. Wise determined that Wong was a citizen of China, not the US, by virtue of his parentage. He refused to grant Wong entry. The San Francisco native was forced to stay on board the Coptic and other ships for nearly five months, before finally being granted bail for $250. But Wong fought Wise's determination. And by 1898, the Supreme Court would side with him, declaring that he was indeed a US citizen, no matter the origins of his parents. That is the premise that Trump has sought to challenge in his second term. On the day of his 2025 inauguration, Trump issued an executive order to limit birthright citizenship to children born to at least one parent with permanent residency or citizenship. The children of temporary or undocumented immigrants would be excluded. Advocates for birthright citizenship have warned that overturning Wong's Supreme Court victory would have longlasting consequences, effectively leaving certain children stateless. But Trump has argued that birthright citizenship incentivises practices like "chain migration", in which citizens sponsor immigration applications for family members. Trump has also argued that the Supreme Court's understanding of birthright citizenship is divorced from its original meaning. "It is about the BABIES OF SLAVES!" Trump wrote in March 30 social media post. "Look at the dates of this long ago legislation - THE EXACT END OF THE CIVIL WAR!" Nackenoff and other experts say Trump's campaign to overturn birthright citizenship has resulted in a resurgence of interest in Wong's case. According to Nackenoff, Wong's Supreme Court victory largely reinforced a pre-existing understanding of US citizenship. The concept of birthright citizenship was never seriously questioned until Trump's executive order. “It's like Wong Kim Ark said what everybody knew,” Nackenoff said. A majority of Americans, she added, continue to back birthright citizenship. A March survey from the University of Rochester found that only 24 percent of citizens oppose it. The Supreme Court's decision in June, Nackenoff hopes, will bring the matter to a close. "I hope that this will put an end to at least the birthright citizenship dimensions of the anti-immigrant crusade," she said. “In American history, we have certainly had racial and ethnic conflict and attempts to drive out people who we think can't assimilate who aren't like us — and this is another iteration of it." But advocates in San Francisco are working to ensure Wong's memory is never forgotten again. In San Francisco’s Chinatown — the oldest of its kind in the US — organisers recently unveiled a mural depicting Wong beneath the slogan, "I am an American." It is painted on the site where he was born, at 751 Sacramento Street. A few blocks away, a bust of Wong is set to be installed at the Nam Kue Chinese School, which teaches children about Chinese culture. Vincent Pan, the co-executive director of the San Francisco nonprofit Chinese for Affirmative Action, is among those who opposed Trump's birthright citizenship order. Born to immigrant parents, he considers himself among those who benefitted from Wong's Supreme Court case. “It’s easy to distance ourselves when we think it’s just pages in a history book,” said Pan. Community projects like the mural and the statue, he added, can help keep Wong's legacy alive. “It’s an important check on ourselves when we start to believe that these names are abstractions,” Pan said. “The individuals who compose our history are and were real-life human beings.” Sandra and her brother Norman Wong, another one of Wong's great-grandchildren, have also stepped forward as spokespeople. Sandra describes herself as a private person, inclined to shy away from cameras. But last week, at the mural's unveiling, she stood in front of journalists in Chinatown to celebrate her great-grandfather and the community that rallied around him. “You do need to come together and fight for rights,” Sandra said. “They did back then because, being [a] simple, regular guy — it wouldn't have happened on his own.” Growing up, she remembers relating more to her mother's Japanese American history than her father's Chinese roots. Her father was more distant. "I feel a bit of a disconnect because my father wasn't around, so we weren't immersed in Chinese culture," Sandra explained. Still, she remembers walking through Chinatown with her dad not long before he died, thinking, “You know, gosh, I wish I had more of a connection to San Francisco and to all of this.” “Little did I know, a few years later,” she said, “what it would evolve into.” Show moreAbout UsCode of EthicsTerms and ConditionsEU/EEA Regulatory NoticePrivacy PolicyCookie PolicyCookie PreferencesAccessibility StatementSitemapWork for usConnectConnectShow moreContact UsUser Accounts HelpAdvertise with usStay ConnectedNewslettersChannel FinderTV SchedulePodcastsSubmit a TipPaid Partner ContentOur ChannelsOur ChannelsShow moreAl Jazeera ArabicAl Jazeera EnglishAl Jazeera Investigative UnitAl Jazeera MubasherAl Jazeera DocumentaryAl Jazeera BalkansAJ+Our NetworkOur NetworkShow moreAl Jazeera Centre for StudiesAl Jazeera Media InstituteLearn ArabicAl Jazeera Centre for Public Liberties & Human RightsAl Jazeera ForumAl Jazeera Hotel PartnersFollow Al Jazeera English: