To my mind this was a case that eventually led to what we call today a "anchor baby".
It's easy enough to see that the parents, both Chinese nationals, were here as guest workers, in todays parlance. neither of them promoted the US or wanted citizenship via naturalization, and neither is there evidence that the offspring they left behind wanted that either. So they remained Chinese nationals here temporarily.
The case originated from a California statute that cut off the Chinese guest worker program and sought to reduce the numbers. When the son of the Chinese nationals went to china to visit them, he found to his surprise that he was not granted access to return to the US without immigration papers.
The court pulled every possible cite and made them appear to support the man's claims of citizenship by birth. And since then has been used to make anchor babies a fact of our lives.
It has zero relevance to ted Cruz and legal pathways to natural born status as it only deals with birth on native soil.
Is this guy a native born? sure....but does that make him a automatic naturalized citizen?
I contend it did not, because the parents may have been under the physical jurisdiction of the US, but they never expressed allegiance to it, nor did they renounce their Chinese allegiance.
The boys physical presence at birth only placed him in the jurisdiction. he should have petitioned the court to allow him to stay pending a application for citizenship via naturalization.
Hence there is a difference between native birth and natural born as well as some likenesses. These issues must be determined by facts in evidence and not just opinions on unrelated case law or even related case law unless the case is exactly the same.
Personally, the reason we are arguing this is that neither the court or Congress is inclined to fix it. They want it to be a matter of debate for each and every case.
“Personally, the reason we are arguing this is that neither the court or Congress is inclined to fix it.”
Indeed, courts in the past and likely in the near future will be loath to touch it.