Don’t you think the framers of the 14th Amendment meant something a little more narrow when they wrote the phrase, “subject to the jurisdiction thereof”? Surely they didn’t mean that if a fugitive from a foreign country crosses our border while pregnant, and fleeing from the law, happens to give birth, her baby is a U.S. citizen. If you follow this kind of reasoning it creates a paradox. If we arrest illegal aliens, then they must be “subject to U.S. jurisdiction”. The only we they wouldn’t be subject to our jurisdiction would be if we didn’t arrest them, deport them, or legislate against them in any way.
Who was it who once said the Constitution isn’t a suicide pact? They must have noticed nonsense such as this. This “broad interpretation” of the citizenship clause means we can’t legally protect our borders without giving status to anchor babies. Does that sound like something 19th century Americans would be stupid enough to support? (Granted, there are plenty of Americans today stupid enough to support it).
There is no paradox. To be a US citizen you must be both subject to US jurisdiction and born in the US (or naturalized).
"This section contemplates two sources of citizenship, and two sources only: birth and naturalization. The persons declared [112 U.S. 94, 102] to be citizens are 'all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.' The evident meaning of these last words is, not merely subject in some respect or degree to the jurisdiction of the United States, but completely subject to their political jurisdiction, and owing them direct and immediate allegiance. And the words relate to the time of birth in the one case, as they do to the time of naturalization in the other. Persons not thus subject to the jurisdiction of the United States at the time of birth cannot become so afterwards, except by being naturalized, either individually, as by proceedings under the naturalization acts; or collectively, as by the force of a treaty by which foreign territory is acquired. Indians born within the territorial limits of the United States, members of, and owing immediate allegiance to, one of the Indiana tribes, (an alien though dependent power,) although in a geographical sense born in the United States, are no more 'born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,' within the meaning of the first section of the fourteenth amendment, than the children of subjects of any foreign government born within the domain of that government, or the children born within the United States, of ambassadors or other public ministers of foreign nations. This view is confirmed by the second section of the fourteenth amendment, which provides that 'representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed.' Slavery having been abolished, and the persons formerly held as slaves made citizens, this clauses fixing the apportionment of representatives has abrogated so much of the corresponding clause of the original constitution as counted only three-fifths of such persons. But Indians not taxed are still excluded from the count, for the reason that they are not citizens."
http://laws.lp.findlaw.com/getcase/us/112/94.html