Really? They don't have to abide by US laws? Their parents won't get ticketed for running a red light, or arrested for robbing a 7-11? Foreigners are exempt from our laws, from the jurisdiction of the US while here in the US?
Good luck. These guys get real heated over this stuff. The fact is the jurisdiction exclusion was put in place specifically FOR diplomats. One can imagine how bad it would play for an Iranian or Saudi diplomat whose wife popped while on duty here in the US and all of a sudden his child is an American... So diplomats who are not under US jurisdiction (aka diplomatic immunity) are excluded from birthright citizenship.
“Really? They don’t have to abide by US laws? Their parents won’t get ticketed for running a red light, or arrested for robbing a 7-11? Foreigners are exempt from our laws, from the jurisdiction of the US while here in the US?”
Don’t be absurd. The examples you cite are criminal laws, and everyone present within the US is bound by them. The “jurisdiction” referred to in the Constitution relates to one’s national status (i.e., which nation has jurisdiction over the party as a citizen or subject).
In the 14th amendment the word “subject” is used in reference to being a citizen. For example : citizens are “subjects “ of a nation. Spend 5 minutes researching the 14th and Senator Howard(chief writer ) and you would have already know this. Let me put this in a modern context:Children born in the United States AND born of Parents who owe allegiance to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens. You can’t change the meaning of words in order to make it “fit” your beliefs. If this was true everyone who lived in the Gay Nineties (1890’s) would be considered homosexual. Gay meant Happy in the 1890’s, just like subjects meant citizens in the 1860’s.
Anyone here (except diplomats) is subject to our laws. HOWEVER, what is meant in this context is to what country is your parents’ ALLEGIANCE owed? That is who holds primary jurisdiction over their offspring. Therefore, that is the country whose citizenship you hold. Or rightly SHOULD hold. A foreigner who comes here and downloads a baby properly should NOT create a new American citizen.
Of course .06 is correct. Non-citizens visiting the US, or resident here are subject to the same codes and civil and criminal penalties that US citizens obey. Americans abroad are obliged to obey the laws of the countries in which they find themselves. But there's a larger issue.
The child of foreigners is a citizen of his parents'country, is issued a passport from that country, etc. etc. The kid isn't an American ... and that goes double if the parents are illegal border bounders from El Cacadero, the chaotic mess to our immediate south.
Many foreigners here legally take advantage of our lax, naive, and incredibly stupid customs by having their children register as American citizens, and also register them in the home country. They become Dual Citizens, just like that fellow in the public housing project at 1600, Pennsylvania Avenue, whose mother was an American, but whose Kenyan father was here on a student visa and never became a citizen.
Actually, if that teleprompter reader to whom I refer was born in Hawaii, he would be a Native Born Citizen, because of his Mother's citizenship. But he would still not be a Natural Born Citizen, as the traditional view holds that this status is only conferred by two (2) citizen parents.
And that's where the battle lines on eligibility have been drawn by Obama. He claims Hawaiian birth, and that this is good enough to qualify him as President.