Forget all the mental gymnastics. The fact is that in theh 1820s-30s when my ancestors got off a big ship off the coast and went by small boat past Baltimore up the river into PA they had no immigration papers of any kind nor was it customary to have them. Before they were naturalized, some had babies with PA birth certificates. The interpretation at that time was that at birth they were citizens. Some of the immigrant parents eventually became naturalized citizens, some never achieved any papers. The same with some of their descendants in the 1940s-50s who came from Canada.
The fact is that pre-Pat Buchanan in the 1990s there was never any question at all that any all all babies born in the US were citizens by birth (except those of diplomats).
The fact is that this new twisting of the Constitution is new...very new for our 250 years.
In history we had the “No Nothings” we passed a law specifically against Chinese immigrants. At no time did those anti-immigrant groups have any other interpretation of the citizenship of the babies then that the babies were citizens. In fact, the fact that those babies were citizens was an argument against letting in the “unwanted”.
This new interpretation of the Constitution is not STRICT CONSTRUCTION OF THE CONSTITUTION. A new Pernumba (sic) has been discovered.
The Wong Kim Ark ruling was made in a period before the creation of immigrant and nonimmigrant visas. That legal concept didn't come into existence until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952.
Prior to that, the only tool the Court had was domicile law and the Naturalization Act of 1795. Your relatives had no papers because there were no papers. That is an example of taking the modern legal framework and trying to apply it to an earlier world that operated under different rules.
When your ancestors arrived, they were here to establish a new domicile, leaving behind their prior domicile. They didn't come here to stay at an habitual residence while still maintaining a domicile in their home country.
That's the legal distinction that drove emigration and immigration at that period in our history.
-PJ