Editing Citizenship (section)

====United States====
{{Main|Citizenship of the United States}}
[[File: Oil on Canvas Portrait of Dred Scott (cropped).jpg|thumb|Portrait of Dred Scott, the plaintiff in the infamous ''[[Dred Scott v. Sandford]]'' case at the Supreme Court of the United States, commissioned by a "group of Negro citizens" and presented to the Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, in 1888]]
From 1790 until the mid-twentieth century, [[Law of the United States|United States law]] used racial criteria to establish citizenship rights and regulate who was eligible to become a naturalized citizen.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-jul-04-mn-9708-story.html|title=A History of U.S. Citizenship|date=July 4, 1997|website=The Los Angeles Times|access-date=21 September 2016}}</ref> [[Naturalization Act of 1790|The Naturalization Act of 1790]], the first law in U.S. history to establish rules for citizenship and naturalization, barred citizenship to all people who were not of European descent, stating that "any alien being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the [[United States]] for the term of two years, maybe admitted to becoming a citizen thereof."<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://rs6.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=001/llsl001.db&recNum=226|title=A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774 - 1875|publisher=The Library of Congress|access-date=21 September 2016}}</ref>

Under early U.S. laws, African Americans were not eligible for citizenship. In 1857, these laws were upheld in the [[Supreme Court of the United States|US Supreme Court]] case ''[[Dred Scott v. Sandford]]'', which ruled that "a free negro of the African race, whose ancestors were brought to this country and sold as slaves, is not a 'citizen' within the meaning of the Constitution of the United States," and that "the special rights and immunities guaranteed to citizens do not apply to them."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/60/393#writing-USSC_CR_0060_0393_ZO|title=Scott v. Sandford|date=1857|website=Legal Information Institute|publisher=Cornell University Law School|access-date=21 September 2016}}</ref>

It was not until the abolition of slavery following the [[American Civil War]] that African Americans were granted citizenship rights. [[Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution]], ratified on July 9, 1868, stated 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."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_amendments_11-27.html|title=Constitution of the United States: Amendment XIV|date=1868|website=The Charters of Freedom|publisher=U.S. National Archives and Records Administration|access-date=21 September 2016}}</ref> Two years later, the [[Naturalization Act of 1870]] would extend the right to become a naturalized citizen to include "aliens of African nativity and to persons of African descent".<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Naturalization_Act_of_1870|title=Naturalization Act of 1870|website=Wikisource|publisher=U.S. Congress}}</ref>

Despite the gains made by African Americans after the Civil War, [[Native Americans in the United States|Native Americans]], [[Asian Americans|Asians]], and others not considered "free white persons" were still denied the ability to become citizens. The 1882 [[Chinese Exclusion Act]] explicitly denied naturalization rights to all people of Chinese origin, while subsequent acts passed by the US Congress, such as laws in [[Naturalization Act of 1906|1906]], [[Immigration Act of 1917|1917]], and [[Immigration Act of 1924|1924]], would include clauses that denied immigration and naturalization rights to people based on broadly defined racial categories.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://library.uwb.edu/static/USimmigration/1917_immigration_act.html|title=1917 Immigration Act|website=US Immigration Legislation Online|publisher=University of Washington-Bothell Library}}</ref> Supreme Court cases such as ''[[Ozawa v. the United States]]'' (1922) and ''[[United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind|U.S. v. Bhagat Singh Thind]]'' (1923), would later clarify the meaning of the phrase "free white persons," ruling that ethnically Japanese, Indian, and other non-European people were not "white persons", and were therefore ineligible for naturalization under U.S. law.

Native Americans were not granted full US citizenship until the passage of the [[Indian Citizenship Act]] in 1924. However, even well into the 1960s, some state laws prevented Native Americans from exercising their full rights as citizens, such as the right to vote. In 1962, [[New Mexico]] became the last state to enfranchise Native Americans.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/elections/voters9.html|title=Elections: Native Americans|website=Library of Congress}}</ref>

It was not until the passage of the [[Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952]] that the racial and gender restrictions for naturalization were explicitly abolished. However, the act still contained restrictions regarding who was eligible for US citizenship and retained a national quota system which limited the number of visas given to immigrants based on their national origin, to be fixed "at a rate of one-sixth of one percent of each nationality's population in the United States in 1920".<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/immigration-act|title=The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (The McCarran-Walter Act)|website=The Office of the Historian|publisher=U.S. Department of State}}</ref> It was not until the passage of the [[Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965]] that these immigration quota systems were drastically altered in favor of a less discriminatory system.