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Throughline · The History of Birthright Citizenship · 6 Feb 2025 podcast

And then, what does this legal argument mean for all immigrants across the country? Could this same logic be applied to birthright citizens from Europe?

Julie Novkov is the dean of Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy at the University at Albany, SUNY, and co-author of American by Birth, Wong Kim Ark and the Battle for Citizenship.

Wong Kim Ark was still stuck on a steamer off the coast while his case played out in court. It had been months, and he was right in the middle of a bigger battle between the U.S. government and Chinese Americans.

Finally, in the fall of 1895, the court came to a decision. He wins. He wins.

Wong Kim Ark was technically free, but his victory was short-lived.

the government appealed the case up to the Supreme Court. They did this because they wanted to enforce and expand the Chinese Exclusion Act. Even the president at the time, Grover Cleveland, was in full support of excluding Chinese immigrants.

So the government did it. It appealed the case all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. And the Solicitor General, the lawyer who represents the government in front of the Supreme Court, was right out of central casting.

Holmes Conrad came from a prominent slave-owning family. He had spent the Civil War as an officer, fighting for the Confederacy. And here's some nice irony for you. Because he fought for secession during the Civil War, Conrad actually had his citizenship revoked.

Meanwhile, Wong Kim Ark, after being detained those horrible four months on ships, was back to his hardscrabble life in San Francisco. He was earning money and sending it to his wife and kids in China. And all the while, the government was trying to beat him in court, questioning his citizenship.

Yet behind the scenes, he's got an all-star, high-powered legal team on his side, paid for by the Chinese six companies.

For this case, they hired two accomplished white lawyers —

Many big businesses had a keen interest in the Wong Kim Ark case. They needed labor, cheap labor, to expand and be profitable. So they jumped to support Wong Kim Ark's case.

Evarts and Ashton had argued cases before the Supreme Court before, but... I would have to think that they were pessimistic at this point. The two of them were coming off a loss in a high-profile case involving a Chinese client. Going into this case, they had every reason to doubt the outcome, an outcome that would be potentially devastating for Wong Kim Ark and thousands like him.

Coming up, Wong Kim Ark heads to the Supreme Court.

I'm Randa Abdel-Fattah. And you've been listening to ThruLine from NPR.

And me. And.

Casey Minor. Fact-checking for this episode was done by Kevin Vogel.

Special thanks to Sandra Wong and Julie Su.

Music for this episode was composed by Ramtin and his band, Drop Electric, which includes Navid Marvi, Sho Fujiwara, Anya Mizani. We're going to be talking about the art of cinematic storytelling at the On Air Fest in Brooklyn on February 21st. Want to come? Go to onairfest.com and use the code THROUGHLINE40 to get 40% off your ticket.

Thanks for listening.

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