It took Norman Wong more than seven decades to fully grasp the weight of his great-grandfather’s legacy. Born and raised in San Francisco, Wong never questioned his identity as an American. Even as a teenager, when he learned about the Chinese Exclusion Act in school — and how it once denied people like his ancestors the right to become citizens — the history felt distant.
Years later, when Wong was in his late fifties, he visited his father in Rio Linda. As they sat together, his father reached into a stack of newspapers by the table and carefully pulled one out. Unfolding its pages, he pointed to a Chinese-language article with quiet pride. It was a story of how Wong’s great-grandfather had once taken on the United States government, fighting for birthright citizenship. Wong couldn’t read Chinese, so he glanced at it and thought, “Oh, that was a long time ago. Interesting history!”
Wong’s great-grandfather, Wong Kim Ark, was the son of Chinese immigrants, Wong Si Ping and Wee Lee. After taking a trip to visit his family in China in 1895, Wong Kim Ark was stunned when customs officials denied his re-entry to San Francisco. Despite having been born and raised in San Francisco, Wong was told by customs officials that he was not a citizen because his parents were not born in the U.S.
At the time, amid the nation’s prevailing anti-Chinese sentiment, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 banned Chinese laborers from immigrating to the U.S. for ten years and barred Chinese immigrants already in the U.S. from becoming naturalized citizens. But, with support from the local Chinese community in San Francisco, Wong Kim Ark challenged the U.S. government in court — and won.
On March 28, 1898, the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Wong Kim Ark that with some exceptions, anyone born on U.S. soil is a U.S. citizen, regardless of their parents’ nationality or immigration status, based on the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. The landmark decision firmly established the legal principle of birthright citizenship in the U.S.
Now, more than a century later, that right is being challenged again.
Last November, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump campaigned on the idea of ending birthright citizenship for children born to parents who are not U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents. For the first time since he was born, Wong realized that what his great-grandfather, Wong Kim Ark, had once fought to gain, he might have to fight to keep.
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That fight has now become more real as Trump moved from campaign rhetoric to action. On his first day back in office, President Trump signed an executive order aimed at ending birthright citizenship for children born in the U.S. if both parents are unauthorized immigrants or temporary visa holders. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments tomorrow in a case challenging the nationwide injunctions that stopped President Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship from taking effect.
Before the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Norman Wong, a 75-year-old retiree living in Brentwood, California, spent most of his time at home, tending to his lilies, California golden poppies and succulents and watering his vegetables in his garden. Now, Wong is filling his days giving interviews, attending community events, and joining legal scholars and immigrant rights advocates in a fight to defend a constitutional right affecting all Americans.
With birthright citizenship on the line, Wong has found a new sense of urgency to speak out and advocate for the cause.
“This isn’t just about Chinese or Japanese people,” said Wong, who is of both Chinese and Japanese descent. “It’s about everyone in this country. The way things are going now, it’s becoming scary to live here, and that’s not the future I want for my children or grandchildren. We have to settle this nonsense now so the future can be bright. Because right now, the future doesn’t look good for America.”
“When I first heard about it [Wong Kim Ark’s story], I did not think much of it. I took birthright citizenship for granted, like it was nothing new under the sun,” Wong said. His father mentioned that he had been interviewed by a Chinese-language newspaper about Wong Kim Ark’s legacy. “I thought it was just history, and it was interesting,” Wong said. “But I could tell my father was very proud of it.”
For decades, Wong Kim Ark’s landmark legal victory remained a quiet legacy within his family, according to Wong. It wasn’t until Wong reached middle age, with grown children of his own, both his father’s and mother’s families’ immigrant roots in America slowly began to unfold. Their family histories not only deepened Wong’s sense of identity but also reflected the treacherous journey of many immigrant families in the United States, who, he said, often navigate racism and exclusion by internalizing their trauma rather than speaking openly about it.
Even though Wong Kim Ark won his Supreme Court case in 1898, his family still faced scrutiny over their citizenship. In 1901, Charles Mehan, an immigration official in El Paso, Texas, arrested Wong Kim Ark on the grounds of violating the Chinese Exclusion Act when he tried to re-enter the U.S. from Mexico. He eventually made it home, but the encounter took its toll, as he spent about four months proving his citizenship.
Later, Wong Kim Ark’s eldest son, Wong Yook Fun, who was born in China and later tried to reunite with him, was denied entry because the U.S. government claimed there was insufficient evidence to prove his relation to his father. After being detained at Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay for years, Wong Yook Fun was deported back to China in 1911. In 1931, when Wong Kim Ark was in his 60s, he returned to China, where he spent the remainder of his life.
Norman Wong’s own father, Wong Yook Jim, who was born in China and came to the U.S. in 1926 at the age of 13, was also detained alone at Angel Island for weeks. After being released, he was sent to live with his uncles in the Midwest to work, according to Wong. The trauma of being detained stayed with him for life. “He found it very emotionally difficult, and so he didn’t talk about it,” Wong said. “It was very painful when he did talk about it. Even when he was older, he would practically cry. So we really couldn’t get much information from him.”
When Wong attempted to speak to his mother’s side of the family, they were equally silent about the struggles and trauma they had endured as immigrants. Wong’s mother, Kimiko Takeuchi, was born in the U.S. but, during World War II, was detained along with her family in an incarceration camp for Japanese Americans. (Note: while the term “internment camps” is a widely used term, it has been called inaccurate for failing to address that many of those detained were U.S. citizens, and not “enemies” as the definition of internment would imply.) Wong says she never spoke about that part of her life to him. As a child, he often visited his grandmother’s home, surrounded by relatives and other children. And while he learned about the Japanese incarceration camps in school as a teenager, he said he never knew his mother had been among those detained. “We didn’t even know they went to camp,” he said. “They were incarcerated because their citizenship was questioned. But these were literally concentration camps, with armed guards and barbed wire. These were not summer camps.”
It wasn’t until 2019, a year after her death, that Wong discovered her photo while visiting an exhibit at the Hayward Museum in California, honoring Japanese Americans who had been incarcerated during the war.
Wong believes the deep trauma that Japanese Americans have experienced partially explains why so many have remained silent about the history of Japanese incarceration camps during World War II. He noted that many in the Nisei generation, the second generation born in the U.S. to Japanese immigrant parents, chose not to teach Japanese to their children, hoping that relinquishing part of their Japanese heritage would in turn prove their loyalty to America.
By the time Wong was a teenager in the 1960s, he was also influenced by the prevailing stereotype of Asians as the “model minority.”
“They didn’t make trouble. They went along with things. That was the prevailing wisdom in the United States about Asians in general,” Wong said. Through tears, struggles, separations, and fear, many of the historical details in Wong’s family were lost in what went unsaid.
“For me, my family history has been a wall, but now I’m realizing that it opened the door for millions of others who call this country home. Birthright citizenship has changed the face of America,” Wong said. His family, which now consists of a mix of Danish, German, English, Japanese, Chinese, and Mexican heritage, lives all across the U.S. “Attacks on the constitutional rights my predecessor fought for are only meant to divide us further in our already fractured world,” he added.
Wong said his children support his decision to speak out, but he has chosen to keep them out of the spotlight, out of concern that “they could get targeted.”
“But somebody has to stand up,” Wong said. “I’m 75, what could be done to me? That’s why I’m proud to be asked to help.”
As with his great-grandfather more than a century ago, many community groups, advocates, and legal experts are standing beside him. In March, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously voted to reaffirm birthright citizenship protections under the 14th Amendment. A coalition of San Francisco-based Asian American groups, including Chinese for Affirmative Action (CAA) and the Chinese Chamber of Commerce of San Francisco, launched a weeklong series of events titled “Born in the USA: Wong Kim Ark and the Fight for Citizenship” to mark the 127th anniversary of the landmark ruling and mobilize support for preserving birthright citizenship.
Meanwhile, a wave of legal challenges to the Trump Administration’s executive order is underway. In January, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), along with several other civil rights organizations, filed a lawsuit accusing the administration of “flouting the Constitution’s dictates.” A coalition of 19 Democratic attorneys general has also sued to block the order. In early April, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), along with more than 80 Asian American organizations and legal centers, filed an amicus brief opposing the executive order.
“I feel privileged to be working with people who care deeply about this issue,” Wong said. “They could have done this without me, probably, but I feel I can do my part. I believe in what I’m doing, and I think it’s right.”
For Wong, the fight to protect birthright citizenship is not only about honoring his great-grandfather’s legacy. “I’m not the person who will determine the importance of Wong Kim Ark in history,” he said. “It’ll be decided by everyone else. And honestly, that’s what matters.”
He emphasized that birthright citizenship is an issue that affects all Americans. “Because in reality, unless you’re Indigenous, all Americans were once foreigners or foreign-born in some way. So we need a fair set of laws applied fairly. If they could apply these rules by unconstitutional means, we’re being stripped of all rights. Losing citizenship for any individual means losing all your rights. There’s more than one fight here.”
Wong said birthright citizenship should never be taken for granted, recalling his great-grandfather’s struggle. “He had to fight for it, and we still have to fight for it,” he said. “And who will be the next Wong Kim Ark? Maybe there will be another to make this happen. The more people step up, the less likely these rights will be taken away from us.”
