The Asian American Pacific Islander Resource Center (AAPIRC, pronounced a-perk) was officially established in the 2021-2022 school year. Our Ribbon Cutting Ceremony took place on April 28th, 2022 in celebration of AAPI Heritage Month. We aim to build a sense of belonging for AAPI students during their studies at the University of New Mexico. AAPIRC also seeks to provide culturally relevant programs that cultivate Asian American and Pacific Islander leaders within communities. AAPI designation refers to all Asians including heritages in East Asia, Pacific Islands, Southeast Asia, West Asia/Middle East, South Asia, and Central Asia. We are inclusive of all AAPI-identified students including those who are multicultural/mixed race, adopted, and part of the widespread diaspora. More information about AAPIRC is availablehere.
John San Nicolas is a senior at UNM studying Religious Studies and Philosophy. His research focuses on the interaction between American Christianity and politics. With family originating from Guam and Mexico, John has come to learn the importance of questioning how religion shapes and is shaped by power and politics. You can read John’s work on his Patheos.com column, “Faithful Politics,” where he addresses how Christians can build a just common life with their civic neighbors
Since taking office, President Donald J. Trump signed a slew of executive orders. These orders saturated the news cycle. Several were met with immediate legal challenges, causing concern, outrage, and even fear for many Americans. The collection of executive orders regarding immigration caught my interest.
On October 31, 2024, Trump visited Albuquerque, New Mexico for a rally. Many were surprised that Trump would visit the heart of a state that hadn’t voted red since 2004. I remember watching the live stream coverage of the rally. Throughout his hour-and-a-half-long address to his supporters, the topic that Trump hit on the most was immigration.
The Trump campaign leading up to both of his terms centered largely on immigration. For Trump, illegal immigrants are the cause of America’s woes. He cast them as violent assailants who threatened the safety and national fabric of the US, even though immigrants are by and large less likely than US-born citizens to commit crimes.
I set out to analyze the executive orders directed toward immigration that were signed on Day One. These orders carry the same stigmatization against immigrant communities, casting them as dangers to public health and suggesting that the US is under “invasion” by immigrants. But one order in particular stood out to me. This order is titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship.” In this order, Trump walks back American jurisprudence on the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees birthright citizenship. As we will see, Asian American-Pacific Islander (AAPI) history is integral to understanding how the courts have developed their interpretations of the Fourteenth Amendment.
On Day One, President Trump signed a series of executive orders, including withdrawing the US from the Paris climate agreement and making male and female the only genders the US government recognises. / via Wikimedia Commons
The Fourteenth Amendment
Half-length oil on canvas portrait of Dred Scott by Louis Schultze / via Wikimedia Commons
First, let us acquaint ourselves with the Fourteenth Amendment. This amendment was passed by Congress in 1866 and ratified by the States in 1868.
A little over a decade prior to its ratification, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) decided the Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) case. Dred and Harriet Scott were an enslaved married couple who sued for their freedom, granted that they resided in a free territory. This lawsuit spanned over the course of eleven years, with American slaveholding and anti-Blackness taking full form in the
judicial system. In Dred Scott, SCOTUS ruled that the Constitution granted citizenship to American men and women — unless they were Black. “Freedom” for Black people remained the choice of slaveowners after being denied by the highest court of the land.
Because of the intransigent nature of the judicial system, this decision was not to change any time soon. The doctrine of stare decisis holds that present judges must rule according to precedent set by past cases. As such, Justices in the U.S. Supreme Court are incredibly unlikely to roll back prior cases. For example, the nearly fifty-year gap between Roe v. Wade (1973) and Dobbs v. Jackson (2022) is quite low.
So, the ratification of amendments was the only route to correct this gravely unjust decision. Since the courts are ultimately beholden to the Constitution, only a constitutional amendment could override the Dred Scott decision. And in fact, both the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments were required to roll back the consequences of Dred Scott. The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees birthright citizenship to all who are “born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”
Trump’s Attempt to Overturn the Fourteenth Amendment
In “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” Trump seeks to roll back the Fourteenth Amendment. It also in a serious way rewrites the history of its legal interpretation. The order reads that
the Fourteenth Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States. The Fourteenth Amendment has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”
This claim is made without any evidence cited. When we look at the actual interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment — and we must remember that it is how SCOTUS sets precedent for this interpretation that matters, not the interpretation of a President — we find that though there are exceptions to birthright citizenship, they are fundamentally not the exceptions that Trump demands.
Before we visit the precedent on birthright citizenship, it is important to unpack this order more. Trump relies on the participial phrase, “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” which qualifies and delimits who is eligible for birthright citizenship.
Those who the President wishes to exclude from birthright citizenship belong to one of two groups:
(1) when that person’s mother was unlawfully present in the United States and the father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth, or (2) when that person’s mother’s presence in the United States at the time of said person’s birth was lawful but temporary (such as, but not limited to, visiting the United States under the auspices of the Visa Waiver Program or visiting on a student, work, or tourist visa) and the father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth.
Let us see whether these exceptions to birthright citizenship have really been recognized in U.S. judicial history.
How SCOTUS Interprets the Fourteenth Amendment
Remember how Trump’s Executive Order claims that “the Fourteenth Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States”? This is a half truth in its plain sense. But when meant to justify the exceptions laid out in Trump’s executive order, it is an outright falsehood. The exceptions to the Fourteenth Amendment are to be determined by the Supreme Court, not by a President or any other American.
In the U.S., according to the procedures outlined in the Constitution, the implications and exceptions of constitutional amendments are to be decided by judges. And the highest level of interpretation is conducted by the highest court of the land.
SCOTUS’s interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment is strikingly similar to the conditions which led to the Fourteenth Amendment in the first place. This time, the roles of the Court and Congress are reversed. In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act. Section 14 of the Act states that “no State court or court of the United States shall admit Chinese to citizenship; and all laws in conflict with this act are hereby repealed.”
This 1885 Alpha Opera House poster (Tacoma, Washington Territory) is one of many examples of nativist and racist antagonism against Chinese immigrants. This poster was made three years after the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed / via Wikimedia Commons
This Act did not only target Chinese immigrants. It also was weaponized against their children who were born on U.S. soil. This happened to one first-generation Chinese American named Wong Kim Ark. Wong was born to immigrant parents in San Francisco, California. As an adult, he went to visit his parents in China, but upon returning to the U.S., he was informed that he was not a U.S. citizen. Because of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which denied entry to Chinese immigrants, Ark could not return to his California home.
Photograph of Wong Kim Ark / via Wikimedia Commons
United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) was the result when Wong challenged this in court. The Justices weighed in on an important constitutional question: does the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee birthright citizenship to all who are born on U.S. soil? Their basic answer is the same as what Trump claims in his executive order: no. But the exceptions determined by the Court are more closely specified than what the President’s order would establish.
Universal Birthright Citizenship
Justice Horace Gray led a 6–2 majority decision in favor of Wong. (The ninth judge, Justice Joseph McKenna, decided to sit this one out.)
In his opinion, Gray pulls not from some novel concept to protect Wong’s citizenship status, but from older European political thought. He looks to the French Revolution and their turn from jus sanguinis (rule by descent) to jus soli (rule by birth). This turn from the monarchical transfer of power from father to son, jus sanguinis, is replaced instead by rule of the people who are born in the land, jus soli; what Gray calls “birth within the dominion.”
Photograph of Justice Horace Gray (1881–1902). Gray authored the ruling in U.S. vs. Wong Kim Ark (1898) / via Wikimedia Commons
But even for European nations like Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, and Norway at the time, birthright citizenship was determined more by the status of one’s parents than by one being born “within the dominion.” Gray argues that while Europe prioritized parental descent, America prioritizes the individual being born on American soil. One finds in Gray a polemical push against what he sees as an un-American groupish and collectivist sort of thinking.
there is no authority, legislative, executive or judicial, in England or America, which maintains or intimates that the statutes (whether considered as declaratory, or as merely prospective,) conferring citizenship on foreign-born children of citizens, have superseded or restricted, in any respect, the established rule of citizenship by birth within the dominion. (Emphasis mine.)
The Exceptions
Some philosophers like to say that rules are not disproven by exceptions, but are proven to be rules by exceptions. And Gray does outline two exceptions to universal birthright citizenship.
The first exception is if a child born on U.S. soil has parents “employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China.” Of course, though Gray mentions China in particular because of the context of the case, this stands in for any foreign nation.
The second exception pertains more directly to Trump’s cornerstone: being subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. What Gray interprets this to mean is someone who is
not merely subject in some respect or degree to the jurisdiction of the United States, but completely subject to their political jurisdiction, and owing them direct and immediate allegiance.
For Gray, this means “enemy combatants on American soil.” It also excludes certain Indigenous Americans born into sovereign nations (whom Andrew Jackson forced onto reservations through the Indian Removal Act in 1830) from birthright citizenship. This exclusion would be partially resolved by the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act guaranteeing citizenship to all Indigenous Americans. One finds a clear pattern of how restrictive U.S. citizenship has been, even against its purported intention of guaranteeing birthright citizenship to all “born within the dominion.”
I must note that Trump’s order has made many question whether he intends to include Indigenous Americans among those who are not “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” in his “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship” executive order. And there have been reports that ICE has been profiling and harassing tribal members.
Not only does his executive order implicitly revise American history; it potentially calls into question the citizenship of the First Peoples of this land.
Concluding Reflections
This executive order is incredibly concerning and dangerous. In our information-inundated age, we take for granted our immediate access to knowledge online. It is easy to look up the history of judicial interpretation of birthright citizenship. But what Trump’s executive order does is that it goes against this history of jurisprudence, essentially suggesting that his order is really in line with what Justices have ruled in the past – even though this is not the case.
That such falsehood is inscribed in an order signed by the President of the United States is bewildering. But what if this is strategic?
We saw a flurry of executive orders signed on Day One. Some of them do not make sense. Apparently, all Americans are either women or sexless since the government only recognizes people’s sex at birth (fetuses begin developing female anatomies in the early stages, but humans at conception have no sex organs of any type). And now, Trump’s citizenship order would deny birthright citizenship to babies whose parents are either temporarily or unlawfully residing in the U.S., when in fact, this has been an American practice since Wong. Justice Horace Gray would doubtlessly (polemically) see this executive order as European and groupish, not as an American championing of the individual. The Court in U.S. v. Wong based their decision on granting citizenship regardless of parents’ citizenship status!
History is a precious thing. And telling the truth about our history is of utmost importance. If I may speak theologically, history is almost liturgical; it must be habituated in our life rhythms so that we will not forget where we came from and where we fit into this orchestral score of the human story.
Not only does this order go directly against the U.S. Constitution. It obscures and undoes how SCOTUS has interpreted birthright citizenship. And Trump is taking America back to the un-American groupish view of parental juris soli that Gray saw with such disdain.
This executive order, like others, has been met with legal challenges. At the time of writing, I am learning that a third federal judge has blocked this order and nine lawsuits have been filed to stop it. It is in the nature of the American experiment to ensure that branches of government do not overstep their capacities. This system of checks and balances is under threat by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (“government efficiency” would be a nightmare for conservative anti-statists like Seymour M. Lipset!). But the American experiment is robust enough to withstand these challenges, as evidenced by the pushback against these orders.
The future of America remains to be revealed, not only in the next four years but in the extended future as well. We must continue remembering and giving life to our histories. And through our actions, we are writing the history of the now. May our history be remembered well.
Addendum: The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. “Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Written by Emma Lazarus in 1883, fifteen years before U.S. v. Wong and forty-one years before the Indian Citizenship Act was signed into law.
Lady Liberty pictured. A bronze plaque of Emma Lazarus’s poem “The New Colossus,” written in 1883, was cast inside the monument in 1903 / via Wikimedia Commons
I didn’t know what to talk about today. Should I talk about the state of the world as Heba so elegantly has, my identity as a Filipine and Polish person or, what it’s like to be a graduate student for 12 years and counting. But, that would repeat things already said or likely only speak to those with similar backgrounds, heading towards 2-year Master’s degrees, or joining me in the decade-long pursuit of a PhD. Others have different experiences or are heading off to jobs, or gap years, or to take care of family or loved ones or your community. Some might only know that they're heading to the excellently DJ’d Halal Pan-Asian dinner that accompanies this ceremony.
And so I want to highlight something that no matter where we’re heading, we all share. Obviously, we’re all Lobos, or lobo adjacents to include our guests, and we share the communities and practices that make that part of our story. So, I want to remind everyone to recognize and appreciate the importance of the many communities and the practices that bring us together to be here today and help make us who we are.
But, as a PhD student, I’ve learned the necessity of definitions. So, For the purposes of this speech, community means a group of people that you interact with on a regular basis, the folks who support you—even in small ways—that you reach for when you need help, or accomplices. Practices, on the other hand, are things that you do regularly that have meaning. They are meditative, cultural, religious, political or one of many other descriptors.
My first week as an anthropology graduate student, I volunteer to go with someone I have just met to a free yoga class. Before accepting my offer though, she asks me, "Have you ever done yoga before?" I say with the confidence of youth, "No" assuming it will be easy because yoga is just…like...stretching...right? She responds, "It's probably going to kick your ass, and if it doesn't today, you'll probably feel it tomorrow." I don't remember if I feel it the next day, but I do feel like I like it.
So, I pick up the practice. Spending 70 bucks a semester (which feels like a huuuge amount of money on a Graduate Assistant's salary) I attend evening Yoga in Johnson gym, making time for it between writing papers, reading, and figuring out what I want to research. After that initial class though, I tend to go to yoga alone and everything seems to be going well.
Until one night. I'm waiting to get into the room and another student, not the Yoga teacher, comes up and tells me I'm doing downward dog wrong. I'm making more of a crescent shape than the proper A-Frame style one. I say something noncommittal, and she leaves me alone. I walk into Yoga self-conscious and seething. Who was this person? Why did she think it was her place to correct me? She doesn't know me or my level of flexibility! She makes me feel judged by other students. And while judgements or evaluations cross our minds, without someone’s permission, I never consider it my place to comment or critique someone else’s practice, yoga or otherwise. But that person did, and I begin to question if the community created by that evening class is right for me.
Slowly, I shift to a midday class instead where I settle in with a new teacher and a more relaxed community of yoga practitioners. I peacefully and safely focus on my meditative practice without the fear of another student’s judgement. I'm a regular at lunch yoga and then four and a half years into this, I dip my toe and then plunge into practicing aikido, a Japanese martial art.
While I find it intimidating to start a martial art at 26, my years with yoga guide me. They provide a foundation to keep my body safe while I learn to roll and fall as part of this new practice. And eventually, aikido becomes my main meditative movement because one thing that it gives me, that yoga doesn't, is a social community. Myself and my fellow aikidoka grab food together and I make friends who aren't graduate students in my department. Eventually though, my aikido community finds a space off-campus and I decide to spend my meagre graduate wages on dojo dues rather than yoga classes but I keep up my yoga practice where I can.
Then, 2020 marches in and I gratefully rely on my aikido community through lockdown, but I realize my yoga practice is fading. As much as I enjoy yoga, I struggle to practice alone. Even though yoga is a personal practice where I attune to my own meditative needs in physical form, I enjoy doing yoga with people. Although its not the same kind of community as aikido, I need to practice yoga alongside others, with the background of their energy. A community of folks all focusing on the same meditative motions.
And then in the Summer of 2022 I receive an e-mail in my inbox. The new UNM Asian American Pacific Islander Resource Center is open and offering free yoga classes. And it just fits. I make time to be there, hopping on my bike, commuting to campus again for the first time what feels like forever, and sheepishly make my way into AAPIRC.
Admittedly, I feel a bit like a dinosaur being there, having been in graduate school for 10 years in 2022, but I meet a new community. We do yoga as a physical practice but it’s also a place for us to express how we feel and where folks can move or rest as their bodies need, and a place for meditative and spiritual practice. Beyond that, I share in the community that is the next generation of AAPI students and scholars, all you graduates. I see your art and decorations, your events, advocacy, and the gatherings that provide places for social, political, and physical growth as well as academic success.
For Fall 2024, I look forward to finishing up my last semester amongst these communities and practices with other AAPI students and love seeing these communities grow around practices like yoga, language cultivation, and trying new things through events, providing safe space to test out what nourishes us. But sometimes in the rush to get our degrees, to succeed academically we forget to hang on to, cherish, and take pride in those practices as well.
Yes, college is a time to learn, to expand your mind, to get qualified to do your profession. But it’s also where we cultivate our practices, whether they’re cultural, religious, spiritual, political, or physical, and what kinds of communities we enjoy, and, want to support. We explore and discover what and who nourishes, cares for, and protects us. And while you may not have found those yet, or considered them, too focused on making sure you passed your final classes, take a moment now to reflect. What practices and communities helped you succeed and paved the way for you to be here today, a graduate or a soon to be graduate. And which of those can you help. Build. so that we all can share in a safe and nourishing future?
AAPIRC Graduation 2024: Honoring Muhammad Afzaal Hussain (1995-2022)
By Sikandar Awan | May 4th, 2024
While I was thinking about Afzaal these past few days, ever since Miss Farah asked me to say a few words in the memory of Our Afzaal, something happened in my personal life which led me to a few realizations. Bear with me and I hope I can spread my message across.
In Hindi/Urdu, the word “Pardes” is made up of two words. The word “Par” comes from Paraia which means foreign or someone else’s. The word “Des” means country, or world. So a “Pardesi” means someone who is living in a foreign country or a foreign world. Afzaal was one of those who came to a foreign world, left his mark on everyone, made some friends and some foes, worked untiringly towards his goals in life, and had that thirst in his eye where he didn’t only want to move vertically but also horizontally as well.
It’s not easy coming from places like Pakistan, which are still in the aftereffects of colonization, and the chaos it brought to once a rich, cultural South Asia, paving your path in "Pardes", and fighting all the stereotypes you encounter because of your identity, accent, and skin color, and then shine on the foreign skies. Though for a very little while…
Only the person of steel nerves could do it, and Afzaal was one of them. Life and death are in the hands of the Creator, but how we live our life is our own choice. We can either complain, despite the privileges we have, or we can work towards making a difference, and running after our dreams.
I hope that all of us work for the latter and try to be the agent of change we all wish for. I pray for Afzaal and share my condolences to the deceased’s family.
For the AAPIRC graduation convocation, the undergraduate speaker was Heba Moussa, a Palestinian Arab student graduating with a B.S. in Biology with a concentration in Biotechnology and a minor in Chemistry. Heba was also an intern with AAPIRC from Fall 2022 through Spring 2024. She focused on outreach to South West Asian & North African (SWANA) students, event photography, and health programming, including AAPIRC’s weekly yoga.
Good evening, everyone,
It's wonderful to have everyone around to honor this wonderful group of graduates today. My name is Heba Moussa. I am originally Palestinian, born and raised in Deir Debwan, Palestine, and I spent my summers in Gallup, New Mexico. When I started attending the University of New Mexico I found a sense of belonging among my peers at the Asian American Pacific Islander Resource Center. These past three years haven't been a walk in the park, let me tell you. It feels like they flew by, but they were anything but easy.
Today, all the hard work, blood, sweat, and tears, paid off in the form of a 3-hour graduation ceremony not just one of the regular big ceremonies, but something a little more special. Whether it meant pulling all-nighters to finish research papers or missing out on time with loved ones to prep for exams, we've all made sacrifices to get to this moment. As we say in Arabic “نستهين كل غالي كي نحقق الحلم” which translates to “We sacrifice anything valuable to achieve the dream”.
There were plenty of ups and downs along the way. I could go on and on about the lessons I've taken from this rollercoaster ride of a journey. I might dive into how strength became my superpower, or how a blend of determination and passion fueled my personal growth, but we don’t want to go there. However, one thing I would like to talk about is the hardest thing I have experienced during my undergraduate years, especially during my senior year is knowing that my people are suffering so as my country.
I have never understood why some people are lucky enough to be born with the chances that other people did not have. For me to have this path in life, and why across the world there is a woman just like me with the same abilities and the same desires, same work ethic and love for her family who would most likely be a better student and give better speeches - only she sits in a camp and she has no voice. She worries about what her children will eat or if they will even eat at all. She worries about if she and her children will be alive in the next 24 hours or if their lives will be taken away. She worries about how to keep them safe, and if they’ll ever return home. I don’t know why this is my life and that is hers.
But what I do know is that a genocide has been going on for the past 210 days, I know that more than 40,000 of MY people were killed, and 2 MILLION of my people are displaced, meaning they have lost not only their homes, but also their families, their jobs, their schools, their cities, and a lot more.
This did not just start in October of 2023, as I have mentioned earlier. I grew up in Palestine, meaning I grew up watching all that is happening now, happen at a slower pace during my formative years. I grew up thinking it is completely normal to be stopped by a random unexpected checkpoint at 7:00 am on my way to school. As a child, I thought all the chaos was just a regular part of life, like how you get used to the weather changing or days passing by. But as I got older and met more people from different places, I started to see that what I grew up with wasn't normal. Even now, living elsewhere, those early years continue to shape my understanding of conflict, resilience, and the enduring struggle for justice. And that also taught me that the core of who we are as Palestinians is resilient, a trait unaffected by any military occupation.
I want to dedicate the rest of my time to talk about the real reasons that make me so fortunate to be graduating with this amazing group of students. My family, friends, and mentors, who never quit supporting me during my undergraduate years.
I would thank my support system first, Mom and Dad. You've been my rock, guiding me through life's ups and downs. I know I can count on you, and you have never let me down. Thank you for believing in me, even when I found it difficult to believe in myself.
Ahmad, my little brother who everyone mistakes for being at least 5 years older than me, thank you for bringing me my favorite candy whenever you stop for gas. I can't wait to see you one day, standing proudly in your cap and gown, and receiving your degree. I have no doubt that you'll do an amazing job, especially if you follow in my footsteps.
I want to thank my entire family, whether they live here in the US or our homeland, Palestine. I also want to thank my friends for keeping me grounded whenever I felt like I was losing my way. And to the incredible instructors, doctors, and mentors who have supported me along the way, I am truly grateful.
To my fellow grads, congrats on completing four years of college despite a pandemic, and political and social instability. even though these years were some of the happiest years of our lives, these may not have been the easiest.
Last but not least, I would like to end my speech with my favorite poem by Marwan Makhoul:
"In order for me to write poetry that isn't political, I must listen to the birds. And in order to hear the birds the warplanes must be silent."
