I learned that the criteria for citizenship that it never favors POC and POC often have to prove themselves to be considered citizens in the US. In ‘Ozawa and Thind’, it is pretty clear that being white was the gold standard. The fact that Ozawa had to constantly fight over the fact that he isn’t ‘Caucasian’ in order to gain citizenship is pretty absurd. The fact that Ozawa had to assimilate himself fully into the American culture while detaching himself from his Japanese culture in order to prove his loyalty to America and gain citizenship is down right ridiculous. Also Lopez says “Japanese immigrants shared much in common with their European counterparts, yet every European immigrant group regardless of national origin, had the right of naturalization and precisely because they possessed it no matter how beleaguered they were.” Europeans had more privileges to becoming citizens, and yet Asians had to fill out the loyalty questionnaire to show their loyalty to the U.S. Even though they say white Europeans had it easy, there was still plenty of prejudice for specific groups of European immigrants, like Irish, and Italian immigrants. I think anybody should be able to become a U.S. citizen, unless they committed any federal or murder crimes. All that really matters is to just live here and abide by the laws. If you live, work, and pay taxes here, you’re just as American as someone whose family has been here for 5 generations. Obviously skin color is not something that matters whatsoever and should never matter anyways.
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