1923

Bhagat Singh Thind, a native of Punjab, immigrated to the United States in 1913. He went to the University of California, Berkeley, paid through his work at an Oregon lumber mill, and enlisted in the United States Army in 1917 when the country had entered World War I. He was then honorably discharged in 1918. As an Asian Indian, he would have been categorized as Caucasian or Aryan according to the prevailing racial science of the time. When Thind applied for citizenship in 1920, it was approved by the U.S. District Court. However, the Bureau of Naturalization appealed the case, and the Supreme Court qualified Caucasian as being "white".

Because of the Thind decision, about fifty Asian Indian Americans who were already naturalized had their citizenship rescinded.