The Fight to be American: Military Naturalization and Asian Citizenship

In 1862, Congress passed legislation granting foreigners serving in the U.S. military the right to expedited naturalization. Although driven by pragmatic concerns, "military naturalization" served as a powerful symbolic message: those willing to fight for the United States are worthy of its citizenship. At the same time, military naturalization conflicted with existing laws that limited naturalization to whites and blacks. In this Article, we analyze how courts weighed the competing ideologies of citizenship by examining court cases brought by Asian aliens seeking military naturalization between 1900 and 1952. Our research demonstrates the importance of instrumental and ideological pressures in shaping the legal understanding of U.S. citizenship, as well as the contradictions that emerged as the judiciary sought to bring coherence to conflicting legislative acts regarding naturalization. More significantly, we show how decisions made by the courts in defining the pertinent legal issues in military naturalization cases helped perpetuate racialized conceptions of citizenship. t Dcenesh Sohoni is Associate Professor of Sociology, College of William and Mary. Amin Vafa is a graduate student at the Elliott School for International Affairs at George Washington University. The authors are grateful for valuable suggestions and insightful comments from Catherine Lee, Megan McQuiddy, Misha Petrovic, Tracy Sohoni, and the editors of the Asian American Law Journal. This work was supported in part by a William and Mary Faculty Summer Research Grant. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the meetings of the American Sociological Society (2007). Please direct all correspondence to Deenesh Sohoni, Department of Sociology, College of William and Mary, P.O. Box 8795, Williamsburg, VA 23187; e-mail: dssoho@wm.edu.