Growing up in Boston where blue-blooded people would proudly claim that their ancestors arrived in the New World on the Mayflower, I was always defending my birthrights. Since I was born inside Kenmore Hospital in Kenmore Square next to the iconic CITGO neon sign emblematic of being near Fenway Park, I would demand that I was a proper Bostonian. But people would always ask, “Where are you really from?” They wanted to know where my parents came from implying that my birthplace of Boston didn’t count.
Today there’s a movement to deny US citizenship to a baby born in America but whose parents are not yet citizens. Birthright citizenship is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment. In 1898, the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Wong Kim Ark, a San Francisco born cook of Chinese descent was denied reentry to the US. The Court ruled in Wong’s favor. The 14th Amendment passed during Reconstruction was to also ensure that children of former slaves were protected from violence.
When I was born in 1949, my mother was not yet a naturalized US citizen. But my birth in the shadows of the Red Sox’s Fenway Park meant that I was a citizen. My father who returned from serving in the US Army in Germany during WWII was granted citizenship for his willingness to shed his blood for the United States.
During this same war, over 110,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry were rounded up, relocated in faraway camps and denied their rights as citizens.
Many Asian Americans are perceived by others as unfailingly “foreigners” meaning that we don’t belong here. Thus, we usually keep our heads down to not draw attention because who knows when someone might deny our citizenship. For me, I vote, pay my taxes, engage in civic duty and participate in civil disobedience-all rights of an US citizen.
In the Bible, people were also perceived as aliens and foreigners but we are taught that when we host strangers in our midst, we might very well be welcoming angels (Hebrews 13:2). Newcomers to a new land become loyal and contributing members of the community and are then deeply indebted to the hospitality for another chance in life that they become good citizens.
I hope and pray that someday our grandchildren would be granted all the rights, privileges and responsibilities of their birthright citizenship rather than to be undermined because of the color of their skin.