Court accused of using racial references

PAGO PAGO – The US Court of Appeals has been accused of using a racist, century-old ruling that referred to “alien races” as “savages” when they made a decision to deny American Samoans citizenship rights.

A lawyer involved in the landmark case says the US judges used antiquated and racially-based laws to rule the citizenship clause in the US Constitution did not apply to people born in American Samoa.

Under federal law, citizenship is guaranteed to residents of US territories including Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and Puerto Rico.

But Americans Samoans are classified as US nationals and must live in America for six months in order to apply for citizenship.

A lawyer for the group of plaintiffs, Charles Ala’ilima, criticised the three-judge panel for basing their decision on the Insular Cases, which historically referred to “alien races” as “savages”.

“It was done at a time when America was very strongly into racial distinctions of people,” he said. “They did it to basically keep people of colour down and advance the superiority of white people.

“America has changed since then, and what is surprising is that they have not changed in this particular area.

“They reversed a lot of previous laws against black people and it would have been a natural thing to reverse those racial distinctions in this case.”

The government of American Samoa had filed briefs against the petition, arguing the granting of US citizenship to the island’s residents would threaten the territory’s government.

Former governor Togiola Tulafon said the court’s decision was “legally correct”.

“For nearly sixty years of our history, we depended on the US for everything – medical care, education, jobs, just literally everyone on this island,” Tulafon said. “The ruling is a victory for the people who support self-governance and belonging to our own.”

Ala’ilima said the petitioners, from the group “We The People”, are likely to continue the legal fight for US citizenship rights for American Samoans.

“They understand that really the only ones who can overrule a supreme court precedent would be the Supreme Court itself, so they are in there for the long haul,” he said.