Birthright Citizenship and Slave Trade Legislation Gabriel “Jack” Chin, Edward L. Barrett Jr. Chair of Law, Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Law, and Director of Clinical Legal Education Tuesday, March 3, 2020 From the Founding of the United States until 1952, federal authorities denied or questioned the citizenship of Africans and their American-born children, Asian immigrants and their American-born children, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, and Native Americans. Similarly, some now question the entitlement to U.S. citizenship of children of undocumented noncitizens born in the United States. The text of the Constitution seems to plainly grant them citizenship: Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment provides that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States, and of the state wherein they reside.” Gabriel "Jack" Chin is a teacher and scholar of Immigration Law, Criminal Procedure, and Race and Law. He teaches Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, and Immigration, and is Director of Clinical Legal Education. He also works with students on professional projects. His efforts with students to repeal Jim Crow laws still on the books includes a successful 2003 petition to the Ohio legislature to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment, 136 years after the state disapproved it during the ratification process. He and his students also achieved the repeal of anti-Asian alien land laws which were on the books in Kansas, New Mexico and Wyoming. For this work, "A" Magazine named him one of the “25 Most Notable Asians in America.” In connection with classes with a practical component, he has tried felony cases and argued criminal appeals with his students.