Birthright citizenship is a key constitutional provision that defines who is American: if you are born in the United States, you are an American. However, proof of this varies widely unless one is challenged in court. When Barack Obama was challenged by Donald Trump, he ultimately produced his birth certificate.

When I was in graduate school at UCLA, I traveled to Seattle for an academic conference. Some of us found the sessions boring, so we decided to do a weekend trip to Vancouver, Canada, instead. On the way back, we had to pass through a U.S. border checkpoint. In those days, it was just a kiosk, like the ones you encounter upon entering a national park, with an agent or two on station. The border check was quite lax then. When we stopped at the kiosk, the agent stuck his head out his window to be able to see who was in the car, a Volkswagen Beetle, and asked each of the four of us: where are you from? I do not recall what my fellow passengers said, but I said, “Los Angeles,” which was true, but he was probably asking for country of origin, to determine nationality or citizenship. At any rate, satisfied that we were all from the U.S., he waved us through.

A few weeks ago, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Trump’s effort to deny birthright citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants (Trump v. Barbara). It was gratifying to note that much of the argumentation centered around a case that I used to teach in my classes on Asian Americans. The case is “U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark.” Wong was a Chinese American, of Chinese immigrant parents. He went to visit China, and was denied re-entry into the U.S., under the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The government argued that because Wong Kim Ark was the child of immigrant parents who were ineligible to become U.S. citizens, he was not a U.S. citizen, despite being born in San Francisco. The Court ruled in Wong Kim Ark’s favor, noting that the immigrant status of his parents, and their ineligibility for U.S. citizenship, at that time, did not materially affect Wong’s status as a U.S. citizen by virtue of his birthplace.

U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) is a landmark case that helped define America’s idea of citizenship. Asian Americans played a big role in it, ironically, because of laws that discriminated against Asians and Asian Americans. First, there were laws that restricted U.S. citizenship to “free white persons,” making Asians ineligible. Then came the exclusion acts intended to limit Asian migration into the U.S., the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and the Asian Exclusion (Johnson-Reed) Act of 1924. The latter explicitly banned immigration from Asia, by prohibiting entry of aliens “ineligible for citizenship.” These laws banned Asian immigration and made immigrants already in the U.S. unable to become citizens.

Another irony in these anti-Asian immigration and citizenship laws was that it fueled Filipino immigration into the United States. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and the Asian Exclusion Act of 1924, basically shut down labor recruitment from China and Japan, a main source of labor for the sugar plantations of Hawaii, and the farms of the West Coast. These exclusion laws, however, could not apply to Filipinos since the Philippines was a U.S. colony, and by implication, a U.S. territory; they were considered U.S. nationals or of U.S. nationality. In the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s, the Philippines became a major source of farmworker labor for Hawaii, and the West Coast. So, while the anti-Asian immigration laws of the 1920s barred Asians from immigrating, it opened the door for unregulated immigration by Filipinos who happen to be Asian.

The spike in Filipino immigration sparked by labor shortages due to anti-Asian immigration laws would ultimately generate a pushback. The Tydings-McDuffie Act of 1934, sometimes called the Philippine Independence Act, ended unregulated Filipino migration. This law outlined a 10-year process for Philippine independence, which was achieved in 1946. But a peek into the details of this legislation shows that it is also the Filipino Exclusion Act of 1934. This law reclassified all Filipinos, including those living in the U.S., as aliens for purposes of immigration, and a quota of no more than 50 immigrants per year was allowed. This reclassification as aliens put an end to the relatively unregulated migration of Filipinos to the U.S. and emphasized their ineligibility for citizenship. This would make it difficult for Filipinos who reside in the U.S. to travel back to the Philippines, visit family, and celebrate holidays, and then return to the U.S. They could be stopped at the border, as an alien ineligible for citizenship, as happened to Wong Kim Ark.

For immigrant communities, birthright citizenship provides the path that ultimately leads their community into being considered “American.” Since their children who are born here are American, they become “partial Americans” by being parents of Americans. This applies, too, to members of their extended families, aunts, uncles, and grandparents who are able to immigrate. This is a vesting process that builds American communities. It is the process through which Filipino immigrant communities become Filipino American communities.

Asians were once considered ineligible for citizenship, a condition that led to the stereotype of Asians being forever foreigners. And to this day, because we look different from Caucasians, the instinctive reaction from many Americans is that we are foreigners. I have been asked many times, “where are you from?” to which I have answered, “Los Angeles.” This sometimes elicits, “No, no, I mean which country are you from?” I am a naturalized American, a Filipino American; but to many, especially those from east of California, I am a foreigner, and this is the stereotype that many Asians, including Filipinos, suffer from, since they were once ineligible for citizenship.

Birthright citizenship has enabled us to gradually dispel this negative stereotype. This has opened pathways to fuller participation in American civic society. We vote, we participate in the justice system through jury duty, and run for public office. Most recently, a Filipino American, Ysabel Jurado, was elected to the LA City Council, a first in the history of the city. Jurado is of Filipino immigrant parents, and one can easily imagine how, without birthright citizenship, her path toward political leadership may be very different. Our history as Filipino Americans is very much intertwined with birthright citizenship. It is the means by which early Filipino immigrants and farmworkers were able to establish roots, build communities, and enjoy the entitlements of citizenship. Without it, we might well be an example of that negative and racist stereotype of Asians as “forever foreigners.”

The idea of using place of birth as a fundamental way of defining who is American is as elegant as it is simple. It did take U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark to clarify that, with some very few and narrow exemptions, the nationality of one’s parents, or their eligibility for citizenship, does not matter. If you were born in America, you are an American. It is the inclusivity in this idea that shapes American society. It includes Native Americans who were born here even before the idea of birthright was a legal concept enshrined in the Constitution. It includes the many, many children of immigrants from all over the world who are born here: Europeans, Asians, Middle Easterners, South Americans, and Africans. Even children of former enemies, such as Germans and Japanese, can be American if they were born in America. The idea of birthright ultimately knits together these immigrant communities into the social fabric of American society since if their children were born here, these children are American. The national origins of their ancestors become less salient.

As a retired academic, I am happy to mention that I was a faculty member in a field called American studies which is devoted to the study of the different ethnic groups that comprise American society. Its purpose is to promote a better appreciation of the history and culture of these groups and their contributions to America. Students who have taken a course or two in American studies have a broader consciousness of the diversity of American society and an appreciation of their immigrant families. We now mark and celebrate “history months” to highlight contributions of Filipinos, Blacks, Mexicans, etc. And at the start of civic events, there is an acknowledgement that this event is taking place on land previously owned by Indigenous Americans. This is an acknowledgement that American society is an interwoven fabric of Native Americans, and immigrants from all over the world. Without birthright, America might just be a collection of disparate, or worse, balkanized enclaves of Germans, Slovenians, Italians, Koreans, Japanese, Mexicans, Chinese, Filipinos, etc. This is what Trump seeks to do. Will the Supreme Court let him?