By Sacha Wedner | AsAm News
If you asked Norman Wong about carrying on the legacy of his great-grandfather, Wong Kim Ark, he would describe his role in the fight to preserve birthright citizenship as accidental.
In a Zoom interview with AsAmNews, Wong said that, initially, he had no intentions of carrying his great-grandfather’s torch, but that changed when he started to receive messages as attacks on birthright citizenship made headlines.
“I wasn’t looking to honor my great-grandfather’s name in any way or keep this issue alive. What happened was this issue came to a head, I believe, when Trump started to take office, and then people started to contact me because birthright citizenship became a national issue, in a sense,” Wong explained. “And so, people started to contact me and I was willing to talk to them, and that’s my role. It’s not one I carved out for myself, it’s people asking me what I can do to help, in a sense, by just giving my experience and a little bit of my family history.”
Staring Monday, in light of the Trump administration’s stance against birthright citizenship, a coalition of San Francisco-based Asian American groups will be partnering to present Born in the USA: Wong Kim Ark and the Fight for Citizenship. This will be a weeklong series of events to honor the 127th anniversary of birthright citizenship in the U.S., and to continue the fight to preserve it.
Wong Kim Ark, born to Chinese immigrants in San Francisco, was detained after reentry to the U.S. from China in 1894 on the false basis that he wasn’t a U.S. citizen. His case would be taken to the Supreme Court, where it was ruled that birthright citizenship applied to all U.S. citizens, including those whose parents were immigrants.
President Trump has made ending birthright citizenship a priority because he says it incentivizes people to enter the country illegally and then rewards their newborns with citizenship.
Wong joined the Born in the USA week’s community symposium on March 24 as a special guest speaker. He explained his connection with his great-grandfather and his family history, saying that he didn’t know about Wong Kim Ark or his connection to him until later on in his life.
“In reality, I’m not the expert on my own family history, because Wong Kim Ark, he’s really a stranger to me.” Wong explains, “I never met him and never knew of him until well into adulthood, with fully grown kids.”
Wong credited event organizers for “keeping this issue alive, so that basically these birthright citizens, so their rights don’t just get all rolled over.”
Wong Kim Ark Week is born
Chinese for Affirmative Action (CAA), collaborated with the Chinese Chamber of Commerce of San Francisco, Chinese Culture Center, Chinese Historical Society of America, API Legal Outreach, API Civil Rights Network, and numerous other organizations to make the Born in the USA week possible.
“I think part of the reason why CAA wanted to get behind launching a Wong Kim Ark Week was because we knew that this issue was going to impact our immigrant communities,” said Nick Gee, CAA’s advocacy manager and manager of the Born in the USA Week, in a Zoom interview with AsAmNews. “And specifically, there was going to be questions that the Chinese American community had.”
“And so, in collaboration with some of our local partners here in the city of San Francisco, (CAA) is particularly partnering with the Chinatown Media and Arts Collaborative, or CMAC,” Gee continued. “And so it’s a growing collective of artist groups, community-based organizations based in San Francisco’s Chinatown, really aimed … at uplifting the stories and experiences of the Chinese American community in Chinatown.”
Events planned
The week-long itinerary opened with a virtual book talk featuring Bianca Mabute-Louie, the author of Unmissable, and a community symposium about Wong Kim Ark and “the fight for citizenship.”
On March 27, organizers will host a special edition of CAA’s Chinatown History & Art Tour, highlighting the history, activism, and art of San Francisco’s Chinatown in the context of Wong Kim Ark’s legacy.
The final event of the week will be a birthright citizenship resolution and Wong Kim Ark dedication, which will be held in Chinatown on March 28 at 2:00 p.m. The event will be led by local activists and feature a plaque of Wong Kim Ark to celebrate his impact on birthright citizenship.
Throughout the upcoming week, the San Francisco Public Library North Beach campus will be hosting a book display highlighting Asian American and Pacific Islander authors and works, “inspired by themes of migration, community, and resilience”.
Broad impact of ending birthright citizenship
The Born in the USA event comes amidst the backdrop of the Trump administration signing an executive order to terminate birthright citizenship on Jan. 21. Put into effect, this order would bar access to U.S. passports, social security cards, healthcare access, lunch programs, federal student aid, and more, according to CAA.
Wong sees the current moment as part of a legacy of centuries of xenophobia in the U.S.
“I don’t think it’s a recent thing,” said Wong. “For a few years, for a few decades, birthright citizenship was no longer an issue. Now it’s a big issue, and it’s mainly, I think, being directed at non-Asians, other people of color, first. But I have no doubts it’ll get back to Chinese, then Japanese, then Koreans.”
“I’m almost not surprised that something like this is happening because the U.S. Government did do something like this to our community in the past,” continued Gee, referring to the infamous Chinese Exclusion Act and the Geary Act, which required people of Chinese descent in the U.S. to carry resident permits.
To preserve birthright citizenship in the U.S., you can sign this CAA letter opposing the Trump administration’s executive order to ban birthright citizenship and sign up to join Stop AAPI Hate’s One Home campaign.
AsAmNews reached out to the Center for Immigration Studies which opposes birthright citizenship, but did not hear back.
“I would really, you know, encourage people to sign their petitions, to call their representatives to make noise right and to call the person who represents them,” says Gee. “And to say, we really need to be advocating for immigrant communities. Now is not the time to back down. Now is the time to protect and fight for birthright citizenship.”
