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To: SilentServiceCPO
My point is that the laws violate the 14th Amendment.

Certainly not. The most you can say is that they are not required by the 14th Amendment, but no one has ever claimed that Congress cannot grant citizenship to people other than those made citizens by the Constitution itself. See, for example, the statutes granting citizenship to Puerto Ricans.

The wording "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the States wherein they reside." is vague enough to be misinterpreted,

Most find it pretty clear.

but the authors were pretty clear that they didn't intend for it to cover foreigners.

The subject barely came up in the ratification debates-- the focus was obviously on former slaves-- but the few mentions of children born to foreigners are ambiguous at best. I don't think the authors' intentions were clear either way.

It wasn't until much later that this became the meaning du jour.

The definitive Supreme Court ruling was Wong Kim Ark, in 1886. Not quite contemporary with the 14th amendment, but not all that much later.

51 posted on 06/22/2006 4:24:42 PM PDT by Lurking Libertarian (Non sub homine, sed sub Deo et lege)
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To: Lurking Libertarian
The most you can say is that they are not required by the 14th Amendment, but no one has ever claimed that Congress cannot grant citizenship to people other than those made citizens by the Constitution itself

True enough. How about "the laws violate the intent of the authors of the 14th". This is made clear in the comments of the authors as captured in the Congressional Record.

Most find it pretty clear... I don't think the authors' intentions were clear either way.

To quote Sen. Jacob M. Howard, the author of this clause, "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."

To further quote Sen. Lyman Trumbull, who authored the "Jurisdiction" clause, "It is only those persons who come completely within our jurisdiction, who are subject to our laws, that we think of making citizens"

definitive Supreme Court ruling was Wong Kim Ark, in 1886

Wong Kim Ark was decided in 1898, not 1886, and that case I believe was more influenced by the Chinese Exclusion Laws issue than the "jurisdiction" clause. Another difference is that he was born of parents who, while not US citizens, were here as permanent legal residents. This is a key difference. They remained in the US legally and raised him in the US. They left him, to go home to China, when he was an adult. Following a visit to them in China several years later, he was detained because he was Chinese. This case was as much about anti-Chinese racism as about citizenship.

54 posted on 06/22/2006 5:32:25 PM PDT by SilentServiceCPO
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