United States federal law
Naturalization Act of 1790
|
Other short titles
| Naturalization Act
|
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Long title
| An Act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization.
|
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Enacted by
| the
1st United States Congress
|
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Effective
| March 26, 1790
|
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|
Public law
| Pub. L.
Tooltip Public Law (United States)
1?3
|
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Statutes at Large
| 1
Stat.
103
,
chap. 3
|
---|
|
- Passed the House of Representatives
on March 4, 1790 (
[1]
)
- Passed the Senate
on March 19, 1790 (
[2]
) with amendment
- House of Representatives agreed to Senate amendment
on March 22, 1790 (
[3]
) with further amendment
- Senate agreed to House of Representatives amendment
on March 25, 1790 (
[4]
)
- Signed into law
by President
George Washington
on March 26, 1790
|
|
Naturalization Act of 1795
|
Wikisource
has original text related to this article:
The
Naturalization Act of 1790
(1
Stat.
103
, enacted March 26, 1790) was a law of the
United States Congress
that set the first uniform rules for the granting of
United States citizenship
by
naturalization
. The law limited naturalization to "free
white person(s)
... of good character", thus excluding
Native Americans
,
indentured servants
,
enslaved people
,
free Africans
,
Pacific Islanders
, and non-White
Asians
. This eliminated ambiguity on how to treat newcomers, given that free black people had been allowed citizenship at the state level in many states. In reading the Naturalization Act, the courts also associated whiteness with
Christianity
and thus excluded
Muslim
immigrants from citizenship until the decision
Ex Parte Mohriez
recognized citizenship for a Saudi Muslim man in 1944.
[5]
Congress modeled the Act on the
Plantation Act 1740
of the
British Parliament
(13 Geo. 2 c.7) that was officially titled
An Act for Naturalizing such foreign Protestants and others therein mentioned, as are settled or shall settle in any of His Majesty's Colonies in America
, and used its provisions concerning time, oath of allegiance, the process of swearing before a judge, etc.
[6]
[7]
Provisions
[
edit
]
There was a two-year residency requirement in the United States and one year in the state of residence before an alien would apply for citizenship by filing a Petition for Naturalization with "any common law court of record" having jurisdiction over his residence. Once convinced of the applicant's "good character", the court would administer an oath of allegiance to support the
Constitution of the United States
. The applicant's children to the age of 21 would also be naturalized. The court clerk was to record these proceedings, and "thereupon such person shall be considered as a citizen of the United States".
The Act also provided that children born abroad when both parents are U.S. citizens "shall be considered as
natural born citizens
," but specified that the right of citizenship did "not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States."
[8]
[9]
[10]
This Act was the only U.S. statute ever to use the term "natural born citizen", found in the U.S. Constitution concerning the prerequisites for a person to serve as president or vice president, and the
Naturalization Act of 1795
removed the term.
Though the Act did not specifically preclude women from citizenship, courts absorbed the common law practice of
coverture
into the United States legal system.
Under this practice, the physical body of a married woman, and thus any rights to her person or property, was controlled by her husband. A woman's loyalty to her husband was considered above her obligation to the state.
Jurisprudence on domestic relations held that infants, enslaved people, and women should be excluded from participation in public life and conducting business because they lacked discernment, the right to free will and property, and there was a need to prevent moral depravity and conflicts of loyalty.
Afterward
[
edit
]
The
Naturalization Act of 1795
repealed and superseded the 1790 Act. The 1795 Act extended the residence requirement to five years and required that a prospective applicant give notice of three years of application. The
Naturalization Act of 1798
extended the residency requirement to 14 years and the notice period to five years. The
Naturalization Law of 1802
repealed the 1798 Act, restoring the residency and notice requirements of the 1795 Act.
With the adoption of the Naturalization Law of 1804, women's access to citizenship was increasingly tied to their state of marriage. By the end of the 19th century, the overriding consideration to determine a woman's citizenship or ability to naturalize was her marital status. Starting in 1907, a woman's nationality entirely depended on whether she was married.
[15]
The
Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek
, which the U.S. Congress ratified in 1831, allowed those
Choctaw
Indians who chose to remain in
Mississippi
to gain recognition as U.S. citizens, the first major non-European ethnic group to become entitled to U.S. citizenship.
Congress made significant changes in citizenship in the 19th century following the
American Civil War
. The
Fourteenth Amendment
in 1868 granted citizenship to people born within the United States and subject to its jurisdiction, irrespective of race, but it excluded untaxed "
Indians
" (Native Americans living on reservations). The
Naturalization Act of 1870
extended "the naturalization laws" to "aliens of African nativity and to persons of African descent" while also revoking the citizenship of naturalized Chinese Americans.
[16]
Under the Fourteenth Amendment and despite the 1870 Act, the
Supreme Court
in
United States v. Wong Kim Ark
(1898) recognized
U.S. birthright citizenship
of an American-born child of Chinese parents who had a permanent domicile and residence in the United States, and who were there carrying on business, and were not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the
Emperor of China
.
[17]
U.S. citizenship of persons born in the United States since
Wong Kim Ark
have been recognized, although the Supreme Court has never directly made a ruling concerning children born to parents who are not legal residents in the United States.
Native Americans were granted citizenship in a piecemeal manner until the
Indian Citizenship Act
of 1924, which gave them blanket citizenship whether they belonged to a federally recognized tribe, though by that date, two-thirds of Native Americans had already become U.S. citizens by other means. The Act was not retroactive, so it did not cover citizens born before the effective date of the 1924 Act or outside of the United States as an indigenous person.
Further changes to racial eligibility for citizenship by naturalization were made after 1940 when Congress extended eligibility to "descendants of races indigenous to the Western Hemisphere", "Filipino persons or persons of Filipino descent", "Chinese persons or persons of Chinese descent", and "persons of races indigenous to India".
[18]
The
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952
prohibits racial and sex
discrimination
in naturalization.
[19]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
"
Annals of Congress
, House of Representatives, 1st Cong., 2nd sess"
.
Library of Congress
. 1790. p. 1463
. Retrieved
August 6,
2021
.
- ^
"
Annals of Congress
, Senate, 1st Cong., 2nd sess"
.
Library of Congress
. 1790. p. 992
. Retrieved
August 6,
2021
.
- ^
"
House Journal
. 1790. 1st Cong., 2nd sess"
.
Library of Congress
. p. 178
. Retrieved
August 6,
2021
.
- ^
"
Senate Journal
. 1790. 1st Cong., 2nd sess"
.
Library of Congress
. p. 124
. Retrieved
August 6,
2021
.
- ^
Beydoun, Khaled A. (August 18, 2016).
"America banned Muslims long before Donald Trump"
.
Washington Post
.
ISSN
0190-8286
. Retrieved
November 25,
2022
.
- ^
Lemay, Michael; Barkan, Elliott Robert (1999).
"U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Laws and Issues: A Documentary History"
. pp. 6?9. Archived from
the original
on August 5, 2020.
- ^
"Historical Timeline ? Immigration ? ProCon.org"
.
Immigration
. Retrieved
November 25,
2022
.
- ^
Hymowitz; Weissman (1975).
A History of Women in America
. Bantam.
ISBN
9780072878134
.
- ^
Schultz, Jeffrey D. (2002).
Encyclopedia of Minorities in American Politics: African Americans and Asian Americans
. Oryx Press. p. 284.
ISBN
9781573561488
. Retrieved
March 25,
2010
.
- ^
Bad news for Ted Cruz: his eligibility for president is going to court.
Dara Lind and Jeff Stein. Vox Media. February 18, 2016. Retrieved February 20, 2016.
- ^
Smith, Marian L. (Summer 1998).
"
"Any woman who is now or may hereafter be married...": Women and Naturalization, ca. 1802?1940"
.
Prologue Magazine
.
30
(2). Washington, D. C.:
U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
.
ISSN
0033-1031
.
Archived
from the original on April 29, 2020
. Retrieved
July 18,
2020
.
- ^
Forbidden Citizens: Chinese Exclusion and the U.S. Congress: A Legislative History
. The Capitol Net.
ISBN
9781587332524
.
- ^
United States v. Wong Kim Ark
, 169 U.S. 649 (1898).
- ^
Coulson, Doug (2015). "British Imperialism, the Indian Independence Movement, and the Racial Eligibility Provisions of the Naturalization Act: United States v. Thind Revisited".
Georgetown Journal of Law & Modern Critical Race Perspectives
(7): 2.
SSRN
2610266
.
- ^
Daniels, Roger.
Coming to America, A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life
.
Bibliography
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