Citizenship For Mexicans (Other (Not Listed) Sample)

Name Professor Course Date Introduction Natalia Molina’s article discusses challenges experienced by Mexicans in their fight for legal and racial status. Mexicans were considered neither white nor black and most people insisted on classifying them as Indians, this was despite Guadalupe-Hidalgo treaty provisions. These efforts intensified more after the Act of Immigration of 1924 and the two supreme court decisions on the cases; Ozawa v. United states and Bhagat Thind v. United States (1922 and 1923 respectively). They declared Asian Indians and Japanese as not white and thus ineligible for citizenship. Mexicans acceptance as citizens of America was heavily debated since the issue was coming to a decision of who could be considered as white (Molina, 167). An opportunity was seen by the white supremacists, to nullify the Mexicans eligibility for U.S just after the Ozawa and Thind rulings. Efforts to restrict eligibility for Mexicans have been a lot and supported by the following; Federal Bureaus of Immigration and of Naturalization, American Eugenics Society (AES), California Joint Immigration Committee (CJIC) and the general citizen (Molina, 245). During the war between the U.S and Mexico, the Guadalupe Hidalgo treaty established Mexicans eligibility in the U.S in 1848. In spite of this, citizenship still was based on the whiteness, which in the treaty it was not stated so, rather than making citizenship available to the Mexicans that remained in the territories of annex, irrespective of their race and basing their eligibility on nationality (Molina, 256). In the 1910, Mexicans immigration increased since most of them were running from the Mexican Revolution and also because the U.S provided good programs that encouraged them to migrate, this was as result of short labor created by the World War 1. In a memo to Washington State Representative Albert Johnson in February, it was declared that Mexicans were eligible for citizenship by Davis head of the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization. There are two cases in the 1920s that clearly brings forward the concept of race and color. The two cases are based on the Federal Naturalization Law of 1790. The first is the Takao Ozawa’s case of 1922 in which he had applied for naturalization indicating that he was white. In his brief to the court he stated that his skin was not purely white only because of exposure to severe sun in Kyoto, Japan and Hawaii. The Supreme Court ruled against his request despite the fact that he had lived in America for long and was able to speak in English; he really had the American culture in him (McLaren, 46). The ruling was that Ozawa was from Japan thus he was not white and therefore not eligible for citizenship. The other case was between United States and Bhagat Singh Thind who was born in India but had lived in the U...