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Who Gets to Be an American? On the Evolution of US Citizenship
As we approach Election Day, just days before another potential government shutdown, we must reflect on how white supremacy has historically limited U.S. citizenship and threatened participation in our democracy.
Nov 05, 2023
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s ruling that Bhagat Singh Thind was ineligible for citizenship. Although he would have been considered “Aryan” or “Caucasian” as an Indian national at the time, the Court did not consider him “white,” and the prevailing law limited citizenship to “free white persons.” Among other things, U.S. citizenship gives people the ability to vote and participate in our democracy. As we approach Election Day on November 7th just days before another potential government shutdown, we must reflect on how white supremacy has historically limited U.S. citizenship and threatened participation in our democracy.
The people indigenous to the United States did not qualify as “free white persons” and did not receive citizenship until 1924. While some Indigenous Americans had long advocated for Indigenous rights, including citizenship, there were others who rejected U.S. citizenship as a violation of previously agreed-upon treaties with the United States. When the 14th Amendment was added to the Constitution in 1868, it was limited to individuals “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” which excluded citizenship from Indigenous Americans.
Meanwhile, Black people in the United States, whether enslaved or free, obtained birthright citizenship through the 14th Amendment. This amendment – following decades of organizing, advocacy, and a civil war – was due in part to free African Americans assembling in state and national conventions starting in the 1830s. During the 1831 convention, the delegates surmised that if the federal government could relocate tens of thousands of Indigenous Americans from the southeastern United States to Indian Territory under the Indian Removal Act in 1830 resulting in the Trail of Tears, Black Americans faced a similar threat of removal. The delegates consequently advocated to have the rights and privileges of American citizens. In 1870, a couple years after the passage of the 14th Amendment, Congress extended eligibility for citizenship to include both white people and “persons of African descent.”
The concept of whiteness was (and continues to be) malleable, especially with respect to eligibility for U.S. citizenship. In 1848, the United States claimed hundreds of thousands of square miles of ceded territory following the Mexican-American War, fulfilling the dreams of expansionist-oriented Americans who believed in “Manifest Destiny.” The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo promised citizenship to 75,000 to 100,000 Mexicans who lived in the new West and Southwest United States. Nearly 50 years later, a federal court in Texas ruled that a man of Mexican descent was eligible for citizenship due to this treaty.While the federal government conferred immediate U.S. citizenship to Mexicans, it was not willing to do so for Puerto Ricans and the residents of other newly acquired territories.
At the turn of the 19th century, the Spanish-American War ended with the United States assuming control of Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. The Treaty of Paris stripped the residents of the ceded territories of Spanish citizenship, but the federal government, for the first time in U.S. history, did not promise citizenship or eventual statehood to the three territories. Instead, Congress eventually designated them as “unincorporated territories” where the inhabitants had “nationality” status rather than U.S. citizenship. As non-citizen nationals, they had fewer rights and protections than that of U.S. citizens. A series of Supreme Court cases characterized the territories as “inhabited by alien races” and the residents as “foreign in a domestic sense.” The U.S. government went on to assume control of Eastern Samoa (now American Samoa), the Danish West Indies (now U.S. Virgin Islands), and the Northern Mariana Islands over the next 50 years. Congress ultimately conferred citizenship on territorial residents between 1917 and 1986 except for American Samoans, but they continue to have fewer rights and protections than citizens of the Union.
As the United States rationalized the limitations of citizenship for territorial residents, it found ways to create pathways to citizenship for immigrants primarily from Europe. In 1929, the federal government permitted immigrants who were overwhelmingly from Europe and arrived without admission records between June 1906 and July 1921 to have an after-the-fact arrival record, which enabled them to apply to become naturalized citizens. While Congress finally eliminated laws that prevented Asians from becoming naturalized citizens in 1952 – 162 years after explicitly limiting citizenship to “free white persons” – distinctions on access to citizenship remain. Congress updated that registry program four more times, most recently in 1986 under the Immigration Reform and Control Act, but it has not advanced the registry date in nearly 40 years. More than two-thirds of U.S. residents who lack a pathway to citizenship have lived in the United States for more than 10 years. Advocates today have been seeking the registry program to be updated once more for immigrants who arrived without admission records before 2015. Advancing the registry date provides a pathway to citizenship and protects people who have lived in the United States for years.
Citizenship, the question of American identity, and how it has been defined has evolved from who can be excluded to removing many of those restrictions. However, there continue to be distinctions between nationals and U.S. citizens residing in “unincorporated territories” from U.S. citizens living in the Union, and there continue to be U.S. residents who lack a pathway to citizenship. Policies and practices rooted in race-based thinking need to be changed to help us fulfill the promise of our American democracy.
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'Not a Blacklist' But a 'Whitewash': EU Slammed for Letting Tax Havens Off the Hook
"How can anyone give this list any credibility?" asked Oxfam's tax expert after the European Union removed infamous safe harbor Bermuda from a roster that also exempts E.U. members.
Oct 05, 2022
The anti-poverty charity Oxfam on Tuesday denounced the European Union's updated list of tax havens, which one expert at the group called a "whitewash" for removing one of the world's most infamous offshore safe harbors while exempting offenders in Europe.
"The current list makes the E.U. a hypocrite as major tax havens in Europe like Malta and Luxembourg escape."
The E.U. list of "noncooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes"--first published in 2017 in an effort to address rampant tax evasion--now includes Anguilla, the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos.
American Samoa, Fiji, Guam, Palau, Panama, Samoa, Trinidad and Tobago, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Vanuatu remain on the list, while Bermuda was removed.
"How can anyone give this list any credibility? Bermuda is one of the world's worst tax havens with its zero corporate tax rate. Yet, the E.U. took it off the list after it made a few woolly promises to reform," said Oxfam E.U. tax expert Chiara Putaturo said in a statement.
"To add insult to injury, major European tax havens like Luxembourg are not on the list because all E.U. countries receive an automatic free pass," she added. "This is not a blacklist, it is a whitewash."
\u201c\u203c\ufe0f Review of EU #taxhaven\u2019s list remains a total whitewash \u203c\ufe0f\n\n"Bermuda is one of the world\u2019s worst tax havens with its zero corporate tax rate. Yet, the EU took it off the list after it made a few woolly promises to reform" added @ChiaraPutaturo \n\nhttps://t.co/5wZFP4SCTM\n#ECOFIN\u201d— Oxfam EU (@Oxfam EU) 1664877910
As the Panama Papers, Pandora Papers, OpenLux, and other investigative reports revealed how capitalist enterprises and the global superrich use offshore havens to avoid taxation--often through the use of shell companies--the European Commission last year launched an initiative "to fight against the misuse of shell entities for improper tax purposes."
However, Oxfam and others denounced the initiative--which excluded financial service firms--as inadequate while E.U. proposals to crack down on evasion and fraud have faced formidable obstacles, including from European countries like Luxembourg, Malta, and Ireland that have been called tax havens.
"Nothing has changed," said Putaturo, who argued that the E.U. "should automatically blacklist zero- and low-tax rate countries and hold European countries up to the same level of scrutiny as non-European countries."
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Noting the "free pass" given to members of the 27-nation bloc, Putaturo said that "the current list makes the E.U. a hypocrite as major tax havens in Europe like Malta and Luxembourg escape the list while countries outside Europe like Eswatini and Botswana risk being blacklisted."
"Stronger criteria could stop the industrial levels of tax dodging by the world's richest and corporates," she added. "Governments and ordinary people are facing the cost-of-living crisis. Ending tax havens could provide the much-needed hundreds of billions in revenue as the world's superrich would have to pay their fair share."
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Pandemic in the Pacific: US Military Bases Are Hot Spots for More Than Just Covid-19--They Also Make Island Territories Targets for Climate Disasters
The U.S. military will continue to put the people of Guåhan at risk, long after the pandemic ends without a fundamental dismantling of the colonial project.
Sep 12, 2020
Guam has always been the U.S. military's best kept secret. Military secrecy isn't really new, but in the midst of the global pandemic the Pentagon ordered bases to stop publicly announcing their coronavirus cases. By July more than 29,000 service members had contracted the coronavirus, and this summer military and public health officials declared the U.S. military a source of transmission both domestically and abroad.
Guahan--the Indigenous name for Guam--is the hardest hit place in the Pacific region by the COVID-19 outbreak, and military transmission is clear. Since March 2020, aircraft carriers from the U.S.S. Roosevelt to the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan have offloaded thousands of infected sailors--many of whom contracted the virus for a second time and broke the island's quarantine restrictions. To date, COVID-19 has infected nearly 2% of the island's population of 165,000, putting the military on island in health condition "Charlie."
The U.S. military will continue to put the people of Guahan at risk, long after the pandemic ends without a fundamental dismantling of the colonial project. After all, the military has always been a hotspot for colonial violence, destroying environments and occupying Pacific Island territories with impunity for generations. Despite the irreversible damage and desecration it inflicts, the general public is largely ignorant of its operations.
"While threats from militarism and climate vulnerability are woven into everyday life in a U.S. colony, this situation has also been met with centuries of continuous resistance."
Politically Guahan is an "unincorporated territory," a designation unilaterally imposed after the U.S. engaged in bombing campaigns and landgrabs to recapture the island from Japan in World War II--in short, a twenty-first century colony. This place may just be the best kept secret that the U.S. has--a nearly forgotten island in Micronesia where the military conducts training and testing that it would never have attempted in the contiguous states.
In 2020, the military continues to occupy nearly one-third of this westernmost U.S. territory in the Pacific. Andersen Airforce Base and Naval Base Guam are two major military bases that host bombers, serve as a home port to nuclear-powered fast attack submarines, maintain huge munitions and fuel storage facilities, maintain a helicopter squadron, operate a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) ballistic missile interceptor, and provide U.S. security forces to support the Department of Defense's military strategy in the Asia-Pacific region. The U.S. is also implementing plans to further inundate the island's existing military troop presence by relocating an additional 5,000 U.S. Marines from Okinawa to Guam. These elements of militarism are largely normalized as insuring security and protection, yet research reveals that it is the U.S. military presence which makes the island a target for attacks and threats ranging from missiles to climate change.
As the largest global force, the U.S. military is the single biggest consumer of fossil fuels, largest producer of greenhouse gases (GHGs), and single entity most responsible for destabilizing the Earth's climate. The Department of Defense is the greatest polluter worldwide with a continuous record of destroying environments and generating massive amounts of hazardous waste for its routine operations. Military expansion as well as the operation of bases exacerbate our shared climate emergency. Dispossession and environmental destruction from militarization demonstrates the overwhelming costs of U.S. empire--particularly among Indigenous communities throughout the Pacific and Indian country. Among the legacy of violence is racism, which existed long before Senate panel efforts to remove confederate namesakes from military bases.
While threats from militarism and climate vulnerability are woven into everyday life in a U.S. colony, this situation has also been met with centuries of continuous resistance. With a ceaseless movement for self-determination, Guahan and its Indigenous Chamoru people continue to challenge the narrative that the island and its surrounding waters are merely a strategic military base for the U.S. to destroy with its Pacific bombing ranges.
As Chamoru scholar Dr. Kenneth Gofigan Kuper explains, living "at the tip of the American military's spear" means living with militarization that is "responsible for environmental contamination, with toxic chemicals and heavy metals sludging through the island's arteries" and though the country is quickly approaching the U.S. Presidential election in November, Guahan has "no vote in the Electoral College, no representation in the U.S. Senate, only non-voting representation in the House of Representatives, and are under the 'plenary' -- or complete -- power of Congress."
While civic engagement and voting rights are important, U.S. colonization and militarization are constant threats to political power for the people of Guahan. Until the island exercises its inherent right to self-determination and the island chooses its own political future, decisions on everything from public health to climate action and the economy will be continuously deferred to external powers. The impacts of these injustices are clear in the midst of surging COVID-19 cases and deaths as the military continues its construction of a live-fire training range on sacred land in Guahan and executes "war games" like RIMPAC throughout the Pacific.
Though Guahan floats on the other side of the world, every sector of civil society is implicated in the military war machine--from pension funds and university endowments to your state and local municipalities--public and private assets are entangled up with military contractors, weapons manufacturers, and war. Such profiteering is largely normalized today. From public to private assets, every part of the "American" experience has profited from colonial control in the Pacific. Yet, divesting these dollars from destructive weapons and war could mean reinvesting in what the pandemic has revealed we all so desperately need--genuine security in public health, education, housing, food, green jobs and a just transition from fossil fuels. As the protests against anti-Black racism continue in cities like Kenosha, Portland, Oakland, Chicago and Philadelphia--rethinking and defunding the police also means divesting from the military industry that structures all our lives.
Centuries of continuous colonization are not Guahan's defining story, and neither is the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated by the U.S. military's exceptionalism. The people of Guahan deserve even more than a symbolic change to military base names--they deserve an end to colonial violence.
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