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. In other words, “the INS view was that Arabs were white and fully eligible for immigration and naturalization benefits (unlike most Asians at the time) and it issued an ‘instruction’ on the matter for INS offices across the nation” (Cainkar 2009: 77). At that point in time, Arabs were racially distinguished from Asians, with their perceived closeness to whiteness allowing them to access citizenship while distancing them from cultures and ethnicities marked as incapable of sharing white European cultural values. What this history reveals is that Muslims had difficulties becoming naturalized citizens because Islam was not associated with whiteness (Gualtieri 2009). For some Arabs, such as Syrians, their Christian identity and lighter skin tones afforded them certain key privileges that South Asians—who had darker complexions and were typically either Hindu or Muslim—were unable to access.

XREF: Connects to legal construction of race and whiteness in US immigration history, which may relate to Ian Haney López's work on whiteness as property. DEFINE: Illustrates how 'whiteness' was a legal and cultural category determining citizenship eligibility, not merely a physical descriptor.

Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, loc. 96