SMU Law Review
ORCID (Links to author’s additional scholarship at ORCID.org)
Abstract
During Reconstruction, as Congress debated the place of African-Americans in U.S. society, it evaluated how the principles it articulated would apply to Chinese-Americans. Rather than adopting a race-neutral jurisprudence, it began identifying the ways in which the law could be deployed to deny Asians economic and political opportunities, and the right to immigrate. Ultimately, a joint network of federal and state laws denied Asians the right to naturalize, to own land, and to immigrate. In a rare win, a divided Supreme Court held that the children of Chinese people born in the United States were citizens by virtue of the Fourteenth Amendment. During the Civil Rights Revolution following World War II, the position of Asians in the United States essentially reversed. Congress made immigration and naturalization race-neutral, and the Asian population increased from about half of one percent in 1960 to around 6% in 2025.
In 2025, it appears that many policy debates of a century and a half ago have reopened. An executive order proposes to deny birthright citizenship to many people granted it under current law. Federal and state officials propose discriminatory enforcement of immigration law on the basis of race, and denial of property rights to people of disfavored national origins. These proposals are current events, not history or jurisprudence, to the end of the story that cannot be told. What is clear is that the notion of strict racial equality applies not at all, or perhaps imperfectly, in the context of immigration.
Recommended Citation
Gabriel J. Chin,
Re-Rethinking Asian Exclusion and Color-Blind Immigration,
79
SMU L. Rev.
35
(2026)
