This would mean something if the previous paragraph in Wong Kim Ark had not directly quoted Minor's definition of natural born citizen. Here are three very important paragraphs in succession from the Wong Kim Ark decision.
That neither Mr. Justice Miller nor any of the justices who took part in the decision of The Slaughterhouse Cases understood the court to be committed to the view that all children born in the United States of citizens or subjects of foreign States were excluded from the operation of the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment is manifest from a unanimous judgment of the Court, delivered but two years later, while all those judges but Chief Justice Chase were still on the bench, in which Chief Justice Waite said: "Allegiance and protection are, in this connection" (that is, in relation to citizenship),
reciprocal obligations. The one is a compensation for the other: allegiance for protection, and protection for allegiance. . . . At common law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children, born in a country of [p680] parents who were its citizens, became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners. Some authorities go further, and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction, without reference to the citizenship of their parents. As to this class, there have been doubts, but never as to the first. For the purposes of this case, it is not necessary to solve these doubts. It is sufficient for everything we have now to consider that all children born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction are themselves citizens.
Minor v. Happersett (1874), 21 Wall. 162, 166-168. The decision in that case was that a woman born of citizen parents within the United States was a citizen of the United States, although not entitled to vote, the right to the elective franchise not being essential to citizenship.
The second paragraph above is the last time in the decision that Justice Gray uses the term "natural-born citizens." From this point forward, he uses the term "citizenship by birth" which is a product of the 14th amendment, dependent on the parents having a permanent domicil and residence. Wong Kim Ark is rightfully NEVER declared to be a natural-born citizen. He wasn't. One doesn't need Vattel. The Supreme Court said it all in black and white: all children born in the country to parents who were its citizens. There is no higher authority than this and it has never been overturned.
This is how come you will not ever “get it.” You are reading the words but you have no idea what they are talking about. You are NOT able to learn what they are talking about because you have a pre-conceived idea that is based on who knows what, but not what the judges say.
That whole discussion you are pulling stuff from is about whether the 14th Amendment is just about slaves, or is also about children of citizen parents and children of foreigners who are born here.
“neither . . .who took part in the decision of The Slaughterhouse Cases understood the court to be committed to the view that all children born in the United States of citizens or subjects of foreign States were excluded from the operation of the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment. :
If they are NOT excluded, then they are in. Plus, the judges here are not saying their own words, but quoting Minor, which did not deal with kids of foreigners. Up above the Wong Kim Wong judges, USING JUST THEIR OWN WORDS, said:
“It thus clearly appears that, by the law of England for the last three centuries, beginning before the settlement of this country and continuing to the present day, aliens, while residing in the dominions possessed by the Crown of England, were within the allegiance, the obedience, the faith or loyalty, the protection, the power, the jurisdiction of the English Sovereign, and therefore every child born in England of alien parents was a natural-born subject unless the child of an ambassador or other diplomatic agent of a foreign State or of an alien enemy in hostile occupation of the place where the child was born.
III. 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.
PLUS, and here is something I just found, that I have NOT seen any people talking about is that the Supreme Court came right out and said that citizenship is NOT based on parentage for people born INSIDE the United States:
“Here is nothing to countenance the theory that a general rule of citizenship by blood or descent has displaced in this country the fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within its sovereignty.
So far as we are informed, there is no authority, legislative, executive or judicial, in England or America, which maintains or intimates that the statutes (whether considered as declaratory or as merely prospective) conferring citizenship on foreign-born children of citizens have superseded or restricted, in any respect, the established rule of citizenship by birth within the dominion. Even those authorities in this country, which have gone the farthest towards holding such statutes to be but declaratory of the common law have distinctly recognized and emphatically asserted the citizenship of native-born children of foreign parents. 2 Kent Com. 39, 50, 53, 258 note; Lynch v. Clarke, 1 Sandf.Ch. 583, 659; Ludlam v. Ludlam, 26 N.Y. 356, 371.
Passing by questions once earnestly controverted, but finally put at rest by the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, it is beyond doubt that, before the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 or the adoption of the Constitutional [p675] Amendment, all white persons, at least, born within the sovereignty of the United States, whether children of citizens or of foreigners, excepting only children of ambassadors or public ministers of a foreign government, were native-born citizens of the United States.
Sooo, quit giving people bad legal advice about this stuff, and how people like Marco Rubio and Bobby Jindal can’t run for president. I have been learning a whole lot of stuff in the last few weeks just by reading these cases, and if you put aside your pre-conceived stupid idea that the 14th Amendment is different from the natural born stuff in the big Constitution, maybe you could learn stuff, too.