Very, interesting, Micah.
Anway, who can tell what citizenship, race, nationality, ethnic group, or state of being someone is over the phone or through the internet? This difficult to do in person as well.

Being something and apearing to be something are not one and the same.

Yet, your point about about the term “chinese” being construable(or any other term for that matter) is well worth pondering.

I hear you and I think I can understand this concept a little bit. In Japan the character 人 (jin)/(hito) is used for both for race and nationality in non-academic settings. As a result of that I have come across a few people who seriously believe that citizenship and race are one and the same. While this may be generally true for countries like China, Japan, and Korea it is certainly not true of everyone in those countries nor is it true of countries that started off as being immigrant countries like American and Canada. Then again, I can understand that their world view was formed living in a country where most people are believed to be of the same race, language, and culture and where those may be considered by many to be proof of citizenship.
In one of my classes I told them that one of favorite American singers is Utada Hikaru (who is American both by birth in the country and by her own choice at the age of 18). The majority of my class thought I was joking, and the rest thought I was confused. Even after I explained to them the situation they still had a hard time accepting the idea that someone with Japanese mother, father, the ability to speak and sing in perfect Japanese could accualty be a forienger（ 外人or 外国人）.

I didn’t know that they still favoured traditional characters in the U.S. Makes sense, I guess.

“Foreigner” here could include overseas Chinese or overseas-born Chinese.