INS declared Arabs white by shared civilization, reversing court rulings to the contrary

Evidence

In 1942, a Michigan court ruled against naturalizing Ahmed Hassan because Arabs were not white, while in Massachusetts, a Syrian man was able to access citizenship because the court ruled in 1944 that Arabs were eligible for citizenship (Lopez 2006; Love 2017). By 1943, Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) determined that Arabs were white and eligible for citizenship due to having a shared culture and civilization with Western countries. INS relied on the case United States v. Thind (1923) to argue that Arabs were not like Asians, who were ineligible for naturalization. — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 123

Categorization

• SEED: The INS’s 1943 declaration is an early instance of the state asserting categorical race classifications independently of courts — direct ancestor of later bureaucratic categorization.
• recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source
• XREF: connects to: Syrian naturalization hinged on courts linking the region to Judaism and Christianity — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 122; Courts admitted Arabs to whiteness via cultural contribution discourse, not religion — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 169; Same-ethnicity petitioners were declared white in one court but not another (+2 more)