Residential Segregation and Interracial Marriages

Part I highlights recent data on racially segregated neighborhoods and low rates of interracial marriage to underscore what Russell Robinson refers to as “structural constraints” that shape and limit romantic preferences. As I discuss in this Part, many cities today continue to be racially segregated. Notably, current data demonstrate a strong correlation between low rates of interracial marriage and racially segregated neighborhoods in those cities. By contrast, contemporary studies indicate that in cities where communities are more racially and economically integrated, the rate of interracial marriages is high. Part II argues that the association between high rates of segregation and low rates of interracial marriages should prompt an exploration of factors that facilitate and perpetuate residential segregation. It also calls for an examination of ways to dismantle these contemporary barriers to the establishment of racially integrated neighborhoods and communities. Part II.A focuses on the ways that some cities are seeking to address residential segregation and housing discrimination in their jurisdictions. Part II.B considers private endeavors that policy makers ought to also consider in seeking to better integrate certain neighborhoods. Specifically, this Part discusses real estate developer James Rouse’s integrated planned community of Columbia, Maryland, which he established in 1967. Rouse’s attempt to integrate through private social engineering of American neighborhoods and cities offers important lessons for those who are invested today in creating conditions for diverse families to flourish

Sanctuary Cities and Local Citizenship

This article explores the ways in which sanctuary laws illustrate the tensions between national and local citizenship, and specifically examines the ways in which sanctuary cities have constructed membership for undocumented immigrants located within their jurisdictions

Creating a Racialized Liminal Status: The 1790 Act and Interstitial Citizenship

This Comment began with De La Ysla’s case to highlight the political status that Filipinos held when the Philippines was a U.S. territory. This Comment argues that this status, which a court would later describe as a “hybrid status ... the so-called ‘non-citizen national,’” was a racialized liminal political status with roots in the 1790 Naturalization Act (1790 Act). Professors Jack Chin and Paul Finkelman claim that the 1790 Act played a critical role in shaping “the very composition of the people of the United States” by including the “free white person” clause in the country’s first naturalization law. One of the goals of Congress in passing this law, as Chin and Finkelman contend, was to intentionally encourage the immigration of primarily White immigrants and ensure that the country would be a White nation. The 1790 Act did so not only by explicitly restricting the group of immigrants who were deemed racially eligible to become citizens but by providing the “foundation for a variety of other discriminatory laws” as well. [...] In Part I, I briefly situate the arguments presented in this Comment within the liminality literature and the work of other legal scholars who have theorized liminality in immigration law. I have previously used liminality as a concept to describe noncitizen nationals as liminal or interstitial citizens and explored how this status disrupts the framing of citizenship along a citizen or noncitizen binary paradigm. I build on this prior work by connecting interstitial citizenship to the 1790 Act. In particular, as I claim in Part II, the 1790 Act laid the foundation for the denial of citizenship to Filipinos at the turn of the twentieth century, which led to their interstitial political status. Congressional remarks surrounding the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Spanish American War, demonstrate the overarching sentiments against extending citizenship to residents of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam. Based on fears of millions of people of color acquiring U.S. citizenship, Congress subsequently passed laws that created a new political status that was liminal in nature. This in-between status would subsequently receive the support of the Supreme Court in the Insular Cases. Part III discusses the role that the 1790 Act played in naturalization cases filed by Filipinos residing in the United States. As that Part explains, courts interpreted subsequent amendments to the 1790 Act as indicative of Congress’s goal to continue to limit naturalization based on race and, in so doing, ensured that Filipinos would never be able to leave their racialized liminal status. The final Section explores the implications of this colonial history for Chin and Finkelman’s understanding of how the 1790 Act shaped the United States as a White nation. This abstract has been taken from the author\u27s introduction

THE 2023 ALIEN LAND LAWS AND HISTORICAL AMNESIA

Remarks from The Color of Law: The Intersection of Race and the Law Symposium relating recent laws prohibiting land ownership by Chinese people to 1920s alien land laws

Citizenship for the Guest Workers of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands

This essay explores an underexamined yet compelling immigration issue: whether Congress should confer to long-term guest workers in the Common-wealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) a path to lawful permanent residence and citizenship. The issue has led to contentious debates between groups arguing for a fair and equitable result for the guest workers and groups advocating for the indigenous peoples of the CNMI who fear loss of political power. Contend-ing that both arguments raise important anti-subordination claims, this essay argues that resolution of the issue requires a close examination of the historical, cultural and economic factors that led to this issue. Ultimately, this essay argues that Congress should provide the guest workers with a path to become permanent members of the American polity. Yet, in doing so, Congress must be mindful of the political needs of the CNMI’s indigenous populations

Blood Quantum and Equal Protection

Modern equal protection doctrine treats laws that make distinctions on the basis of indigeneity defined on blood quantum terms along a racial/political paradigm. This dichotomy may be traced to Morton v. Mancari and more recently to Rice v. Cayetano. In Mancari, the Supreme Court held that laws that privilege members of Native American tribes do not constitute racial discrimination because the preferences have a political purpose – to further the right to self-government of tribes. Rice v. Cayetano crystallized the juxtaposition of the racial from the political nature of indigeneity by invalidating a law that privileged Native Hawaiians. That law, according to the Court, used an ancestral blood requirement to construct a racial category and a racial purpose. Close analysis of the legal construction of the dichotomy between the constitutive notion of indigeneity as either a racial and political identity has largely escaped scholarship. Scholars have examined and critiqued equal protection law’s racialized construction of blood quantum laws and to a lesser extent, their political construction. A more robust examination of the equal protection doctrinal approach itself in categorizing one as race and the other as political, however, has been lacking. This Essay aims to fill this void in scholarship by interrogating and critiquing the dichotomy of the racial versus political meaning of indigeneity based on blood quantum. In so doing, I make two interrelated points. First, I argue that the dichotomy obscures the structural inequalities in the current regulatory process that limits the conferral of federal tribal recognition to a select group of indigenous groups. An indigenous group’s acquisition of federal recognition is critical because, as Mancari shows, equal protection law equates such recognition with political status, which immunizes the group from strict scrutiny. Second, I examine cases in the U.S. territories that have been overlooked in equal protection cases involving blood quantum laws. These cases upheld property ownership restrictions that utilize blood quantum distinctions because they functioned to protect the property and cultures of the indigenous peoples in those territories. Continued marginalization of these territorial cases, I argue, would be a mistake. At minimum, these territorial cases help to advance a broader theory of indigeneity’s political meaning. This more expansive view of the political theory of indigeneity recognizes the relationships among culture, property and autonomy. More broadly, by interjecting these cases in the modern interpretation of blood quantum as a marker for either a racial or political identity, they demonstrate that equal protection law’s current approach sets up a false dichotomy. The implication of law’s recognition of cultural differences in the territories to “mainstream” equal protection law is significant given the doctrine’s resistance to cultural claims. Consequently, these cases facilitate retheorizing the way law views race, political identity, culture and property

Citizenship for the Guest Workers of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands

This essay explores an underexamined yet compelling immigration issue: whether Congress should confer to long-term guest workers in the Common-wealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) a path to lawful permanent residence and citizenship. The issue has led to contentious debates between groups arguing for a fair and equitable result for the guest workers and groups advocating for the indigenous peoples of the CNMI who fear loss of political power. Contend-ing that both arguments raise important anti-subordination claims, this essay argues that resolution of the issue requires a close examination of the historical, cultural and economic factors that led to this issue. Ultimately, this essay argues that Congress should provide the guest workers with a path to become permanent members of the American polity. Yet, in doing so, Congress must be mindful of the political needs of the CNMI’s indigenous populations

Rejecting Citizenship

A Review of Pursuing Citizenship in the Enforcement Era. By Ming Hsu Chen