Naturalization Act of 1790:
In 1790, President George Washington delivered the first-ever State of the Union address, highlighting some of the foremost issues that faced the newborn nation. Among them, he quoted the need for a “uniform rule of naturalization” for foreigners who were to be “admitted to the rights of citizens”, clearly defining this “uniform rule” as an “object of great importance” from Article III of the recently ratified United States Constitution. There was no mention of race, color, ethnic background, or any specified qualifications dictating who can receive citizenship status in either his entire statement or the words that he quoted.
The Constitution grants Congress the ability to establish a “uniform rule” as described by Washington, and so they did. Almost three months after Washington’s address came the first piece of legislation that defined the citizenship process for foreigners to the United States: the Naturalization Act of 1790. The purpose of this law was, as its name suggests, to establish guidelines to become a naturalized citizen of the United States. Notably, the Act limited citizenship on racial grounds: only people belonging to the class of the “free white person” were eligible for naturalization. What it meant to be “white”, although seemingly clear in today’s language, would become a major detail of contention, inspiring more significant and direct actions by the government in its admittance and acceptance of South Asian immigrants.
Among the first batches of foreigners entering the country, for which the Act was passed in order to regulate and process, were some of the earliest South Asians to the Americas. For instance, a Bengali Muslim by the name of Sick Keesar, believed to be an anglicization of the name Sheikh Kesar, came to the United States as a lascar, or sailor, from British India. He became known for the petition of redress he filed to the Pennsylvania Supreme Executive Council, headed by Benjamin Franklin. No one can say for certain whether early South Asian Americans like Keesar directly influenced the passing of the Act, but they most definitely played a role.
Three Indian lascars aboard the RMS Viceroy of India, National Maritime Museum
19th Century Revisions:
The most notable revision of the Act came in 1870, where the wording for the racial eligibility criteria was slightly modified to “aliens being free white persons, and to aliens of African nativity and to persons of African descent". This change wasn’t drastic by any means, but the ambiguity of the term “white” led to a flurry of cases at the appellate level by “aliens” from countries like Syria, Afghanistan, Turkey, and India to come to American soil and petition the United States government to claim whiteness for themselves. In 1870, the population of documented Indian-origin residents was 586, with this number more than tripling to 1,707 residents by the 1880s. Many of these immigrants argued they were white purely by their physical skin color and ancestral connections. A hyper fixation over this specific criterion of color led to far-fetched and “ethnologically based” theories about the nature of one’s race. Opposition to these cases cited the necessity for decisions to be rooted in social grounding rather than science, and called for the “common understanding” of the “average man on the street” to determine what being “white” meant.
Such cases defined many instances of South Asian immigrants to the United States. South Asian immigrants only began to be admitted as naturalized citizens at the beginning of the 20th century. Despite this, a considerable number of South Asian immigrants continued to find their way to the United States. The prospect of the “American Dream” became widely known to the world, with many coming in search of labor, whether in factories or on farms. Others came in search of new market prospects. Beginning around the 1880s, Muslim peddlers from areas surrounding Calcutta came to the United States to sell “Oriental goods,” including cotton and silk, perfumes, and rugs. Many of these peddlers attracted middle-class American consumers interested in buying such goods. There were also immigrants, often wealthier and of high-caste, who came to the United States for the express purpose of education and career advancement. One such example was Anandibai Joshee, a Brahmin Marathi woman from Bombay who was renowned as the first Indian woman to receive a degree in medicine in the United States. Joshee expressed her interest in studying medicine in a letter that ended up in the hands of a Presbyterian minister stationed in India, and later in those of a New Jersey woman named Theodocia Carpenter, who sponsored her stay.
A congratulatory letter from Queen Victoria noting Joshi’s achievement, South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA)
By 1900, just over 2000 South Asian “Indians” were documented residents of the United States, although there might’ve been more. 408 of these initial South Asian Americans resided in New York, laying the foundation for the diverse New York South Asian population present today in areas like Queens. However, citizenship and the full realization of the “American Dream” were unobtainable to many of these South Asian immigrants. These early South Asian Americans defined the foundational steps into an era of significant change in immigration and naturalization policies throughout the 20th century, particularly involving South Asian immigrants. Ultimately, it is their initial strides that exist as the pillars of the modern South Asian American identity and status in the United States.