Trump v. Barbara · ¶355

The Court’s theory does not even explain the later evidence that it characterizes as a revisionist project. If, as the Court suggests, various government officials and scholars were trying to prevent the children of Chinese immigrants from being citizens, then they would not have proposed a domicile requirement alone. They would have needed to propose a citizenship requirement. As Wong Kim Ark exemplifies, many Chinese immigrants were already domiciled here; they simply were ineligible for formal naturalization. See 169 U. S., at 652; Part I–E–3, supra. Accordingly, when the Executive Branch did attempt to exclude the Chinese in the 1890s, it argued against the domicile rule. See Part I–E–3, supra. Meanwhile, as far as I can tell, the people excluded by the domicile requirement were not Chinese, contra, ante at 21, n. 7, but mostly European. Children such as Joseph Speck of Switzerland,…

slip opinion, revised 7/01/26
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