1900 – Organic Act of 1900 Grants US Citizenship to Every Person Born in Hawaii before Its 1898 Annexation, Including People of Japanese and Chinese Ancestry

“The so-called Organic Act of 1900 declared that ‘all persons who were citizens of the Republic of Hawaii on August twelfth, eighteen hundred and ninety eight, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States and citizens of the Territory of Hawaii…’ At the time of the annexation more than half of the islands’ population was Japanese, and about a quarter was Chinese: few were citizens of Hawaii, but thousands of them, mostly Japanese, were enabled to migrate further east to California. In addition, of course, thanks to the Fourteenth Amendment, every person born in Hawaii after the annexation was a birthright citizen. So the United States would soon have tens of thousands of citizens of Asian ancestry.”