They might be right.
The case which brought about the birth passport was one in which the parents (southern Chinese I believe) owned a house in America and were planning to live here permanently.
I think. Just read that earlier today.
There are plenty who believe that was part of what was considered by the court at the time the case was decided...
https://www.google.com.vn/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna926501
NBC News, now there's an unbiased source /s
According to The Fourteenth Debate Website:
The jurisdiction requirement was added to the original draft of the Fourteenth Amendment by the Senate after a lengthy and acrimonious debate. In fact, Senator Jacob Merritt Howard of Michigan proposed the addition of the phrase specifically because he wanted to make clear that the simple accident of birth in the United States was not sufficient to justify citizenship. Sen. Howard noted that the jurisdiction requirement is "simply declaratory of what I regard as the law of the land already." Sen. Howard said that "this will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons."Sen. Reverdy Johnson of Maryland, who was the only Democrat to participate in the Senate debate, was even more explicit about the meaning of the jurisdiction requirement: “[A]ll persons born in the United States and not subject to some foreign Power -- for that, no doubt, is the meaning of the committee who have brought the matter before -- shall be considered as citizens of the United States.” Sen. Johnson's reading of the jurisdiction requirement also is consistent with our naturalization requirements. Since at least 1795, federal laws governing naturalization have required aliens to renounce all allegiance to any foreign power and to support the U.S. Constitution. Such allegiance was never assumed simply because the alien was residing in the United States; instead an affirmative oath was required.
Sen. Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, one of the principle authors of the 14th Amendment, said that "subject to the jurisdiction of the United States" meant subject to its "complete" jurisdiction, meaning "not owing allegiance to anybody else."
In 1884 the Supreme Court held that children born to Indian parents were not born "subject to" U.S. jurisdiction because, among other reasons, the person so born could not change his status by his "own will without the action or assent of the United States." And "no one can become a citizen of a nation without its consent."
Believe the words of the guys who wrote the amendment or NBC News and some minor federal judge, hmmmm... quite a condundrum....