HomeCurated VLOGThe History of Birthright Citizenship in the United States
Curated VLOG

The History of Birthright Citizenship in the United States

By David Pham

Video by ACoM

🕰️ A Long History of Exclusion

Professor Robert S. Chang, Executive Director, Korematsu Center for Law & Equality at UC Irvine School of Law, places today’s challenge to birthright citizenship within a long U.S. history of restricting who counts as a full member of the political community. From the very start, Congress limited citizenship through the 1790 Naturalization Act, which allowed only “free white persons” to naturalize. These racial boundaries shaped citizenship law for generations.

⚖️ Courts, Race, and Citizenship

That exclusion hardened in cases like Dred Scott (1857), where the Supreme Court ruled Black people could never be citizens, a decision that helped trigger the Civil War. The 14th Amendment later overturned this logic and established birthright citizenship. In 1898, Wong Kim Ark confirmed that children born in the U.S. are citizens, even if their parents were barred from naturalization, creating more than a century of legal precedent.

🚨 Modern Risks and Retroactive Harm

Professor Chang warns that a new executive order limiting birthright citizenship could revive past injustices. If upheld, it could open the door to denaturalization, voter suppression, and renewed racial gatekeeping over citizenship, repeating patterns history has already shown to be dangerous.

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