The guidance in the Wong Kim Ark decision says that parents matter. They quote Minor’s definition of natural born citizen that says parents must be citizens, and they go on to say that Ark’s parents mattered in order to make Ark a citizen of the United States because the parents were permanent residents. Ankeny flubbed up by misreading, misundestanding and misinterpreting WKA. Period.
If that were true I’m certain that the Indiana Supreme Court would have taken up the appeal of Ankeny. They didn’t. And Ankeny could have been appealed to the federal courts. It wasn’t.
Below are some examples of the “guidance” from US v Wong Kim Ark that the Indiana Court of Appeals used in their decision that Barack Obama qualifies as a natural born citizen and was eligible to receive Indiana’s Electoral College votes.
From the Wong Kim Ark decision: “To hold that the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution excludes from citizenship the children, born in the United States, of citizens or subjects of other countries would be to deny citizenship to thousands of persons of English, Scotch, Irish, German, or other European parentage who have always been considered and treated as citizens of the United States.”—US v Wong Kim Ark (1898)
From the Wong Kim Ark decision: “The Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, in the declaration that ‘all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside,’ contemplates two sources of citizenship, and two only: birth and naturalization. Citizenship by naturalization can only be acquired by naturalization under the authority and in the forms of law. But citizenship by birth is established by the mere fact of birth under the circumstances defined in the Constitution. Every person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, becomes at once a citizen of the United States, and needs no naturalization. A person born out of the jurisdiction of the United States can only become a citizen by being naturalized, either by treaty, as in the case of the annexation of foreign territory, or by authority of Congress, exercised either by declaring certain classes of persons to be citizens, as in the enactments conferring citizenship upon foreign-born children of citizens, or by enabling foreigners individually to become citizens by proceedings in the judicial tribunals, as in the ordinary provisions of the naturalization acts.”—US v Wong Kim Ark (1898)
From the Wong Kim Ark decision: “The evident intention, and the necessary effect, of the submission of this case to the decision of the court upon the facts agreed by the parties were to present for determination the single question stated at the beginning of this opinion, namely, whether a child born in the United States, of parents of Chinese descent, who, at the time of his birth, are subjects of the Emperor of China, but have a permanent domicil and residence in the United States, and are there carrying on business, and are not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China, becomes at the time of his birth a citizen of the United States. For the reasons above stated, this court is of opinion that the question must be answered in the affirmative.”—U.S. v Wong Kim Ark (1898)
You make my argument for me. The 14th amendment does contemplate two types of citizenship, but as the Minor quote says, natural born citizenship falls OUTSIDE the Constitution. It is NOT defined by the 14th amendment which is part of the Constitution. And the conclusion says clearly, "whether a child born in the United States, of parents of Chinese descent, who, at the time of his birth, are subjects of the Emperor of China, but have a permanent domicil and residence in the United States ..." The parents status mattered. They admit. Embrace it.