By Michelle Shen
(This story is done in partnership with the URL Collective)
The Supreme Court is ruling on birthright citizenship Friday. But did you know that Asian Americans were behind some of the biggest immigrant rights cases in our history? Here’s just some of them.
All photos in this 90 second video are from Wikepedia Creative Commons.
This is an extraordinary, often untold tale of Chinese American history.
In 1916, hundreds of Chinese workers assisted General Pershing and the United States military in an attempt to capture Mexican leader Pancho Villa. Many of them were fleeing violent anti-Chinese attacks across northern Mexico.
When the US military left Mexico, Pershing brought along these Chinese workers, who would almost certainly be killed if they stayed. Despite risking their lives to support an American cause, authorities denied them legal status due to the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred Chinese laborers from entering the United States.
Many, including Pershing, pointed out the irony of allowing Chinese noncitizens to fight in the US military but denying them fair and humane treatment afterwards. Political and moral outcry and lobbying on the part of Pershing pushed Congress to grant them permanent legal residence, marking one of the earliest cases of de facto political asylum.
In another case, a Chinese cook born in the United States named Wong Kim Ark was prevented from returning to the country due to the Chinese Exclusion Act. The Asian American community in San Francisco rallied around him and the Supreme Court ruled in his favor, establishing a precedent of birthright citizenship.
The data around these legal cases is pretty shocking too.
Between 1882, when the Chinese Exclusion Act was put in place, up until 1905, there were about 100,000 Chinese people in the United States. And in that period, Chinese Americans sued the federal government more than 10,000 times over immigrant rights and civil rights. That’s 10% of the Chinese people in America, and about 30 of those cases made it to the Supreme Court.
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