{"id":39066,"date":"2025-01-26T22:34:28","date_gmt":"2025-01-27T06:34:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=39066"},"modified":"2025-01-26T22:34:29","modified_gmt":"2025-01-27T06:34:29","slug":"trumps-blocked-birthright-citizenship-order-attacks-sf-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2025\/01\/26\/trumps-blocked-birthright-citizenship-order-attacks-sf-too\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump&#8217;s blocked birthright-citizenship order attacks SF, too"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul>\n<li><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfexaminer.com\/users\/profile\/Marc%20Sandalow\">By Marc Sandalow | Examiner columnist<\/a><\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Jan 24, 2025\u00a0<em>Updated\u00a0<\/em>Jan 24, 2025 (SFExaminer.com)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com\/sfexaminer.com\/content\/tncms\/assets\/v3\/editorial\/0\/64\/0646c966-d841-11ef-a799-9b747e96555f\/6790158dd4fa1.image.jpg?resize=400%2C267\" alt=\"Trump Inauguration\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><em>President Donald Trump signs an executive order on birthright citizenship \u2014 which was immediately challenged in court \u2014 in the Oval Office of the White House on Monday.<\/em><em>Evan Vucci\/Associated Press<\/em><em><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>A bit of San Francisco history is helpful to appreciate the depravity of President Donald Trump\u2019s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship in the U.S., which a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfexaminer.com\/news\/politics\/trump-birthright-citizenship-order-blocked-by-federal-judge\/article_020e17ef-3a5f-57ce-8fe4-32b5fcfec5a7.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">federal judge temporarily blocked<\/a>&nbsp;Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Roughly 150 years ago, near the corner of Sacramento and Kearny streets, Wong Kim Ark was born to a pair of Chinese immigrants. Neither his timing nor location was enviable. Chinatown in the 1870s was an impoverished, gritty, unsanitary community whose residents were increasingly scapegoated for spreading crime and disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While other immigrant communities faced discrimination, the Chinese were subjected to singular scorn, culminating in the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 banning Chinese laborers from entry to the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Living in a small apartment above their grocery store at 751 Sacramento St., Wong\u2019s family faced poverty and violent pogroms waged by hateful San Franciscans, ultimately driving them back to China when Wong was a teenager.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While in China, he married and had a child before returning to his native San Francisco seeking work. It was his next trip to China \u2014 to visit family \u2014 that&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfexaminer.com\/news\/politics\/why-sf-joined-donald-trump-birthright-citizenship-lawsuit\/article_228db596-d83a-11ef-9dd4-cbe1c70a5b02.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">earned him a place in history<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Wong was aware of the ban on Chinese immigrants, so he carried legal documents on his journey establishing his U.S. residency, as well as notarized letters from three prominent neighbors testifying that he was a native San Franciscan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nevertheless, when he returned to the Port of San Francisco in the summer of 1895, authorities classified him as Chinese and refused to let him disembark. The U.S. Attorney contended that that \u201cby reason of his race, language, color and dress,\u201d&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/NARAprodstorage\/opastorage\/live\/80\/5561\/18556180\/content\/san-francisco\/gallery\/11198_US_Attorney_Intervention.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Wong was Chinese<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The first sentence of the Constitution\u2019s 14th Amendment reads: \u201cAll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.\u201d Yet officials in the 1890s contended that since his parents were \u201csubjects of the Emperor of China,\u201d Wong was not a U.S. citizen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is the same logic that underlies Trump\u2019s presidential order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Wong, kept captive in the Port of San Francisco, blocks from his childhood home, managed to get word to the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association \u2014 known as the Six Companies \u2014 whose lawyers filed suit in a case that eventually made its way to the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 1898, by a 6-2 decision, the court ruled in his favor.&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/perma.cc\/C5PG-SQSP\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Supreme Court Justice Horace Gray<\/a>, writing for the majority, noted that \u201cto hold that the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution excludes from citizenship the children, born in the United States, of citizens or subjects of other countries would be to deny citizenship to thousands of persons of English, Scotch, Irish, German, or other European parentage who have always been considered and treated as citizens of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is this court ruling and its legacy that Trump sought to overturn with his executive order Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By Tuesday, 22 states, joined by San Francisco, filed a lawsuit to block enforcement, and by Thursday a federal judge did just that. U.S. District Court Judge John Coughenour, a Ronald Reagan appointee, called Trump\u2019s action \u201cblatantly unconstitutional.\u201d Coughenour said that in his 40 years on the bench, he couldn\u2019t remember a case that was so clear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is hard to imagine how Trump believes he can override the Constitution and Supreme Court precedent. It is even harder to imagine why Trump believes the country would be better off by depriving citizenship to the offspring of immigrants \u2014 legal or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Trump contends that the law encourages pregnant immigrants to enter the country to birth American citizens. He also contends that no other country permits the practice, which he has labeled \u201cbirth tourism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While there might be immigrants who choose to deliver babies in the U.S., there is no evidence to support his contention that it is a significant factor. And he is flat-out wrong regarding other countries. At least 30 countries have similar birthright laws, including Canada, Mexico, and most of Central and South America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Depriving citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants would create millions of second-class residents, as presumably their offspring \u2014 and their offsprings\u2019 offspring \u2014 would also remain illegal. It would also deprive the country of the remarkable contributions made by children of immigrants, who consistently match or outperform their American counterparts in income and education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>San Francisco itself, where more than one-third of its residents are foreign born, is a fine example of how immigrants make this country great. Citizenship is a privilege most Americans take for granted by virtue of where they are born, not by their race, ethnicity or bloodlines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s hard to picture a time in San Francisco\u2019s history when that was in doubt. And it\u2019s even harder to understand why for some, including our president, the doubt remains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Marc Sandalow is a senior faculty member at the University of California\u2019s Washington Program. He has been writing about California politics from Washington, D.C., for 30 years.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A bit of San Francisco history is helpful to appreciate the depravity of President Donald Trump\u2019s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship in the U.S., which a&nbsp;federal judge temporarily blocked&nbsp;Thursday. Roughly 150 years ago, near the corner of Sacramento and Kearny streets, Wong Kim Ark was born to a&#8230; <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2025\/01\/26\/trumps-blocked-birthright-citizenship-order-attacks-sf-too\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39066"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39066"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39066\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39070,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39066\/revisions\/39070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}