REFERENCES
1 Jasmine Aguilera & Harold Isaac, A Haitian Man’s Brutal Experience With U.S. Border Agents Sparked
Outrage. Now He’s Telling His Story, Time (Mar. 15, 2022), https://time.com/6144970/mirard-josephhaitian-migrants-del-rio-border/.
2 Id.
3 Id.
4 Kevin R. Johnson & Karla McKanders, Systemic racism is rooted in immigration laws — it can no
longer be ignored, The Hill (Feb. 25, 2022), https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/595696-systemicracism-is-rooted-in-immigration-laws-it-can-no-longer-be-ignored/.
5 Rights that are exclusive to citizens are the right to vote in federal elections and the right to hold certain
federal offices. Harper v. Va. State Bd. of Elections, 383 U.S. 663, 665 (1966) (citing U.S. Const. art. I, § 2,
of the Constitution for the right of citizens to vote in federal elections); U.S. Const. art. II, § 1, cl. 5.
6 The U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act defines aliens “as any person not a citizen or national of the
United States.” 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(3); see Gil Gott, Introduction: Identity and Crisis: The Critical Race
Project and
Postmodern Political Theory, 78 Denver U. L. Rev. 817 (2001),
https://digitalcommons.du.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1775&context=dlr (defining de jure
noncitizens).
7 See Angela M. Banks, Chapter 19: Nordic Perspectives on Human Rights Education, of A Human Rights
Approach to Membership and Belonging (Audrey Osler & Beate Goldschmidt-Gjerløw eds., Routledge
2024), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4975800 (“The Fourteenth Amendment of
the United States Constitution guarantees equal protection, and it does so on the basis of personhood
rather than citizenship status. This provision states: ‘[nor shall any State] deny to any person within its
jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws’ (US Constitution, 1776, amendment 14). Even though both
approaches to membership have gaps, the personhood approach offers a more inclusive theoretical
approach to membership. Human rights are allocated based on personhood because they are viewed as
inalienable rights that are necessary for human flourishing. This approach to membership has the
potential to further the aims of human rights by ensuring that all individuals, regardless of citizenship or
immigration status, can participate freely in the places where they live . . . .”).
8 U.S. Const. amend. XIV.
9 Infra section Race & Citizenship Section.
10 Karla McKanders, Sustaining Tiered Personhood: Jim Crow and Anti-Immigrant Laws, 26 Harv. J.
Racial & Ethnic Just. 163 (2010) (arguing that state and local anti-immigrant laws lead to the segregation,
exclusion, and degradation of Latinos, creating “tiered personhood”).
11 In 1790, only white male landowners were allowed to naturalize (or become citizens). Naturalization Act
of 1790, 1 Stat. 103 (1790).
12 U.S. Const. art. I, § 2.
13 Naturalization Act of 1790, 1 Stat. 103 (1790).
14 Dred Scott v. Sanford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857), superseded by constitutional amendment, U.S. Const.
amend.
XIV.
15 Id.
16 Id.
17 Karla McKanders, Immigration and Racial Justice: Enforcing the Borders of Blackness, 37
Ga. State Univ. L. Rev. 1139 (2021), https://readingroom.law.gsu.edu/gsulr/vol37/iss4/6.
18 Chinese Exclusion Act, 22 Stat. 58 (1882). There were a series of Chinese exclusion statutes from 1882
to 1892. See Act of May 6, 1882, 22 Stat. 58 (executing certain treaty stipulations relating to Chinese); Act
of July 5, 1884, 23 Stat. 115 (amending treaty stipulations relating to Chinese); Act of Oct. 1, 1888, 25 Stat.
504 (supplementing prior treaty stipulations); Act of May 5, 1892, 27 Stat. 25 (prohibiting the
immigration of Chinese people).
19 See generally Immigration Act of 1924, 43 Stat. 153 (1924).
20 Mae M. Ngai, The Architecture of Race in American Immigration Law: A Reexamination of the
Immigration Act of 1924, 86 J. Am. Hist. 67, 69 (1999) (“The central theme of [the Immigration Act of