[dpwiener]

But without Congressional action, the presumption of the courts will be the other way in favor of birthright interpretation.

Thank you for your very good analysis. Some people on this thread apparently think that they can read their own interpretation into the 14th Amendment, conclude that it is the only possible correct interpretation, and that it should therefore only be a matter of getting the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case for it to overturn its previous decisions and eliminate "anchor babies".

The fact is that the current historical usage is a very plausible one, albeit one which may be subject to modification by Congress if Congress were to specify what constitutes "subject to jurisdiction". But it will take at least an act of Congress, and possibly a Constitutional Amendment, to change the status quo. The courts are not going to change it on their own, nor is there any strong legal reason for them to do so.

[WOSG]

Yes, we agree. Congress needs to act to fix this. And reasonable original intent interpretation of the 14th *should* allow the Congress to fix this and forbid 'anchor babies' from illegal aliens ...

"But it will take at least an act of Congress, and possibly a Constitutional Amendment, to change the status quo."

IMHO, the Constitutional Amendment would only be required if the Courts overstep their bounds and read out the "jurisdiction" clause completely from the 14th. But since we've seen egregious overreaching in courts before, eg, recent gay marriage ruling, I wouldnt put it past the courts to create a 'birthright' right that's not really there.