[sourcery]

Your quote from Wong Kim Ark does not say what you claim it does. The phrase it uses is "natural born subject." It uses that phrase for the very good reason that it's not ruling (making a precedential holding) about US law, rather is making a dictum about British law (about which it has no authority to rule precedentially.)

[BladeBryan]

sourcery wrote:

Your quote from Wong Kim Ark does not say what you claim it does. The phrase it uses is "natural born subject." It uses that phrase for the very good reason that it's not ruling (making a precedential holding) about US law, rather is making a dictum about British law (about which it has no authority to rule precedentially.)

You seem to have stopped before the second paragraph of the quote. Yes, it started talking about the British rule, but here again is the part you seem to have missed:

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.

Got that? The same rule "continued to prevail under the Constitution". That's what the quote said, and that's what I said the quote said.

[jh4freedom]

Your quote from Wong Kim Ark does not say what you claim it does. The phrase it uses is “natural born subject.” It uses that phrase for the very good reason that it’s not ruling (making a precedential holding) about US law, rather is making a dictum about British law (about which it has no authority to rule precedentially.)

---

In the US government’s briefs for Wong Kim Ark, the government asked:
“The question presented by this appeal may be thus stated: Is a person born within the United States of alien parents domiciled therein a citizen thereof by the fact of his birth? The appellant maintains the negative, and in that behalf assigns as error the ruling of the district court that the respondent is a natural-born citizen.” (p.2)

The government went on to ask:
“Are Chinese children born in this country to share with the descendants of the patriots of the American Revolution the exalted qualification of being eligible to the Presidency of the nation, conferred by the Constitution in recognition of the importance and dignity of citizenship by birth? (p. 34).
http://www.scribd.com/doc/23965360/Wong-Kim-Ark-US-v-169-US-649-1898-Appellants-Brief-USA

The majority opinion in Wong did go on to say: “’Subject’ and ‘citizen’ are, in a degree, convertible terms as applied to natives; and though the term ‘citizen’ seems to be appropriate to republican freemen, yet we are, equally with the inhabitants of all other countries, ’subjects,’ for we are equally bound by allegiance and subjection to the government and law of the land.’”