“Gray blurred this issue to give teeth to the 14th amendment, “
This is the problem with Wong Kim Ark. People running around pretending to know how to read the law espousing this and that and making crap up and pretending it is true. Your quote is ridiculous.
Gray slaughtered the 14th Amendment.
This is why I rarely get involved in the discussion of Wong Kim Ark.
The position that you really want is the one that was set forth by the architects of the 14th Amendment NOT THE ARK DECISION. The architects had a more restrictive intent.
It is important to note that they were trying to keep citizenship away from Indians and this effected the language.
You might want to educate yourself about how Gray slaughtered the 14th Amendment. here is a discussion about the Senators involved with developing the language of the 14th amendment
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2139082/posts
Btw, there was a treaty that was ratified by Senators who also adopted the 14th Amendment.
Justice Gray ignored that treaty.
The interesting concept - that I havent really looked into - is that of Lynch V Clarke. Wong Kim Ark mentions that case in the lower court and by SCOTUS. Was it really overturned by the 14th Amendment as some claim. I don’t know.
Lynch v Clarke was a case in the State court of New York. It held that a person born in New York of foreign parents was a citizen of New York. The reasoning was that since New York had no statute on the question, the English Common law standard should be used by default.
The State Legislature of New York overturned the Lynch v. Clarke decision by passing a statute denying citizenship to the children of Transient Aliens.