Born or Naturalized in the USA: Citizenship in the Period of Chinese Exclusion

US presidential candidates have made passionate pledges to revoke birthright citizenship granted to children of undocumented immigrants and to revoke naturalization this election season. However, these political ambitions are not new. Efforts to dismantle birthright citizenship and prohibit naturalization by nativist groups grew increasingly contentious during Reconstruction, as the nation was recovering from the Civil War. This paper takes a fresh look at the debates over US citizenship that occurred in the aftermath of the Civil War, with a specific focus on Asian American history. It prioritizes a revisionist interpretation of US citizenship and sheds light on the experiences of children of Chinese ancestry who were born in the United States. By doing so, it provides evidence of the sociolegal environments in which these children navigated their lives as US citizens.