The Meaning of Alienage for Wong Kim Ark

When Congress debated the wording of the Fourteenth Amendment, Chinese immigration was not at the forefront of legislators’ minds. They were primarily focused on granting citizenship to newly emancipated Black people while continuing to deny it to Native people living outside of America’s jurisdiction. Their ultimate choice of words reflected these desires. The first sentence of the amendment proclaimed, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.