ong before Donald Trump, birth tourism, and today's debate over birthright citizenship, there was a son of Chinese immigrants named Wong Kim Ark.
And the story of Wong Kim Ark shows why many legal scholars think Trump probably won't succeed in his plans, revealed Tuesday, to end the practice of bestowing U.S. citizenship to babies born on U.S. soil. Ark's fight wound up being the basis of a little-known Supreme Court case that has a outsized effect on the debate over birthright citizenship.
Ark's story starts in 1873, when he was born in San Francisco's Chinatown neighborhood to Chinese parents. His parents were permanent residents but not U.S. citizens. They were in the U.S. to work. By the late 1800s, with big waves of immigrants arriving in the U.S. from China, California and the federal government passed a series of laws discouraging Chinese immigration, which politicians and labor leaders blamed for low wages.
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