Class 1: Citizenship
Who is a citizen, and why does it matter? To understand immigration law, we first need to talk about citizenship: how you acquire it, why it matters, and what important historical connections exist in America between citizenship, immigration, and race.
The principal case for today, Wong Kim Ark, was decided by the Supreme Court during the late nineteenth century, during a generation when the Court laid down the constitutional foundations for federal immigration law. Immigration cases of that era arose in a world where the federal government’s power was much more limited, where the administrative state as we know it today scarcely existed, and where Jim Crow laws were openly endorsed by the Supreme Court. While this constitutional moment has long since passed, we begin in this early period because these foundational cases raise important questions that still resonate today.
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