Aoki Center, Immigration Clinic Victory Highlighted in Associated Press Story

The Associated Press published an article on Marianne Wilson-Kuroda, whose long and complicated quest for U.S. citizenship was brought to a successful conclusion by a UC Davis School of Law team spearheaded by Professors Rose Cuison Villazor and Leticia Saucedo and including the Aoki Center for Critical Race and Nation Studies and Immigration Law Clinic.  The syndicated article was published by numerous newspapers and websites in the United States and around the world.

Wilson-Kuroda was denied citizenship as a result of World War II-era racial exclusion laws that prevented her parents from marrying and barred Asians from immigrating to the United States. She contacted Professor Villazor after reading some of her research in the area, and Professor Villazor organized a group effort to support Wilson-Kuroda’s citizenship case.  Thanks to their advocacy, Wilson-Kuroda was granted a U.S. passport earlier this year.

"Her case is a consequence of this history of discrimination from immigration law and citizenship law that I thought really needed to be corrected," said Villazor. "There was ... this awful history that I felt needed to be addressed as a matter of justice."