I assume you feel exactly the same way about Justice Gray's and the other five justices' opinion in Wong Kim Ark.
MT: "We were not discussing the Minor decision YET.
We are discussing Wong Kim Ark.
Until I have your response on that subject, the discussion of court cases will proceed no further."
Fair enough.
From WKA two passages:
The first explains the English Common Law and its application to the US.
"It thus clearly appears that, by the law of England for the last three centuries, beginning before the settlement of this country and continuing to the present day, aliens, while residing in the dominions possessed by the Crown of England, were within the allegiance, the obedience, the faith or loyalty, the protection, the power, the jurisdiction of the English Sovereign, and therefore every child born in England of alien parents was a natural-born subject unless the child of an ambassador or other diplomatic agent of a foreign State or of an alien enemy in hostile occupation of the place where the child was born."
"III. The same rule was in force in all the English Colonies upon this continent down to the time of the Declaration of Independence, and in the United States afterwards, and continued to prevail under the Constitution as originally established."
The second passage explains the 14th Amendment and how it creates "natural born citizens".
"The foregoing considerations and authorities irresistibly lead us to these conclusions: the Fourteenth Amendment affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory, in the allegiance and under the protection of the country, including all children here born of resident aliens, with the exceptions or qualifications (as old as the rule itself) of children of foreign sovereigns or their ministers, or born on foreign public ships, or of enemies within and during a hostile occupation of part of our territory, and with the single additional exception of children of members of the Indian tribes owing direct allegiance to their several tribes."
[The 14th Amendment makes citizens of everyone born in the US except children of foreign ambassadors, of invading armies and of members of Indians tribes.]
"The Amendment, in clear words and in manifest intent, includes the children born, within the territory of the United States, of all other persons, of whatever race or color, domiciled within the United States. Every citizen or subject of another country, while domiciled here, is within the allegiance and the protection, and consequently subject to the jurisdiction, of the United States. His allegiance to the United States is direct and immediate, and, although but local and temporary, continuing only so long as he remains within our territory, is yet, in the words of Lord Coke in Calvin's Case, 7 Rep. 6a, "strong enough to make a natural subject, for if he hath issue here, that issue is a natural-born subject;" and his child, as said by Mr. Binney in his essay before quoted, "if born in the country, is as much a citizen as the natural-born child of a citizen, and by operation of the same principle." It can hardly be denied that an alien is completely subject to the political jurisdiction of the country in which he resides".
[It's the citation to Lord Coke and the Calvin's Case that is the key. The allegiance owed by an alien to the US is as Lord Coke said in the Calvin's Case, "strong enough to make a natural subject, for if he hath issue here, that issue is a natural-born subject"". He is using Lord Coke's words to show what applies in the US. The child born in the US to alien parents is natural born. And he repeats the Binney quote as being proof of his assertion.]
Yet you STILL have no comment on the fact it states;
1)Children of parents who are citizens are natural born
2)There are doubts about the citizenship of children when the parents citizenship is unreferenced or foreign, but there are NO DOUBTS about what constitutes 'natural born'.
and
3)The judges felt it UNECESSARY to distinguish between the desperate TYPES of 'citizen' in their decision....
Why? Because the question never WAS if he was natural born, but whether he was a citizen of the United States
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[The 14th Amendment makes citizens of everyone born in the US except children of foreign ambassadors, of invading armies and of members of Indians tribes.]
Well....that's VERY odd!
One of the guys who helped write it didn't seem to think so.
"Every Person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States. This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons."
Senator Jacob Howard, co-author of the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment, 1866.
center column halfway down
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llcg&fileName=073/llcg073.db&recNum=11%20
I admire a good imagination as much as anyone, but there is NOTHING in that passage that says the 14th amendment creates natural-born citizens. That term is not even contained within the passage. The phrase that Justice Gray uses is "citizenship by birth." This is a separate phrase. He uses it several times in the decision but completely separate from natural-born citizen. Further, he specifically says that the 14th amendment does NOT define natural-born citizen while he says that the 14th amendment DOES define "citizenship by birth." These are two different things. NBC requires citizen parents and citizenship by birth requires parents who are resident aliens, which he specifies: "all children here born of resident aliens."
It's the citation to Lord Coke and the Calvin's Case that is the key. The allegiance owed by an alien to the US is as Lord Coke said in the Calvin's Case, "strong enough to make a natural subject, for if he hath issue here, that issue is a natural-born subject"". He is using Lord Coke's words to show what applies in the US. The child born in the US to alien parents is natural born. And he repeats the Binney quote as being proof of his assertion.
Yeah, not so much. Calvin's case establishes a fundamental rule that requires parents and the child to have perpetual allegiance and direct obedience to the crown. There's is no parallel for this in U.S. law. The closest we come is through the subject clause, which Gray cites as the parents having permanent residence and domicil. That's not the same at all. Second, the Binney quote shows how weak this citation is. Read it closely:
as much a citizen as the natural-born child of a citizen
"As much a citizen" does not mean "equal to" a natural-born citizen. An apple is as much a piece of fruit as an orange, but an apple is still not an orange. While someone like Obama MIGHT be a citizen (if he could legally prove he was born in the U.S.) he is still not a natural-born citizen unless he was born in the country to parents who were its citizens. If this were "key" to defining 14th amendment citizenship for Wong Kim Ark, the decision could have stopped here, but it doesn't. Instead it goes on for almost 40 pages trying to build a stronger justification for making Ark a citizen. This is because Gray had to try to trump his own legal precedent in Elk v. Wilkins as well as try to get around Slaughterhouse and Minor. He did so by creating a second and SEPARATE class of citizenship through the 14th amendment that is NOT the same thing as natural-born citizenship.