Oh? Where did Minor specify that childrens of aliens are non-NBC?
Answer: they didn't. Minor made specific statements only about the group that included Mrs. Minor. It left other situations very gray, and from the omission of specificity you are trying to extrapolate that they did say it. And then you are trying to get away from a specific statement in Rogers v. Bellei that the United States follows the English common law concept of jus soli.
Which is why no court has bought the argument of a "precedent" from Minor v Happersett, and won't buy it in the future.
From Minor v Happersett:
“Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of the parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first.”
Yet some people insist on substituting the phrase “natural born citizen” into that sentence for the word “citizens.”
Due to honest expectation bias or partisan dishonestly, people defending Barry's eligibility WANT the sentence to read:
“Some authorities go further and include as natural born citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of the parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first.”
But that is NOT what is written in MvH. The “doubts” are NOT about a sub-class of NBC, but a sub-class of citizens who are NOT NBC at birth because the immediately preceding MvH definition of NBC (about which there is no doubt) ONLY includes those born in the country to parents who are citizens.
The MvH holding on the definition of NBC is precedent because it was required to establish a citizen class to which Mrs. Minor belonged.
The WKA declaration that WKA was a citizen was based on the non-citizen class identified in MvH about which there were doubts as to CITIZENSHIP and the WKA court reached WKA’s citizenship but NOT his NBC status. Even the Ankeny court admitted this, as did Malihi.
From Minor:
“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 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.”
Children of aliens or foreigners are DISTINGUISHED from NBC children born in the country of parents (plural) who are citizens. These are the two mutually exclusive classes. Regarding NBC children there is no doubt that they are citizens.
Regarding non-NBC children of aliens and foreigners, the Minor court said there was doubt but unlike the NBC definition which they reached as an essential holding needed to assess the voting rights of the citizen class that Mrs. Minor belonged to, the Minor court did not reach clear definition of the children of aliens and foreigners which had been distinguished as non-NBC.
begin quote from Ankeny:
“In Minor, written only six years after the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, the Court observed that:
“’The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. 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 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.
Id. at 167-168.’
“Thus, the Court left open the issue of whether a person who is born within the United States of alien parents is considered a natural born citizen.”
end quote
Wrong, wrong, wrong! This is an erroneous interpretation and Malihi’s embrace of the interpretation is erroneous.
Reading the “black letter” dicta, the Minor v. Happersett court left open the issue of whether a person who is born within the United States of alien parents is considered a CITIZEN, not doubts about whether a child of alien parents is NBC. These non-NBC children of aliens or foreigners are the persons about whose CITIZENSHIP there were doubts. There were no doubts that these persons were not NBC because these persons were explicitly “distinguished from” NBCs:
“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 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.”
IOW, if a person born in the US had one or more alien or foreigner parent, they were “distinguished from” NBC persons. That is explicit and that definition of NBC as having NO alien or foreign parent is a definition which is “never doubted.”
As philman_36 has noted, even the Ankeny court stated in dicta that the WKA court did NOT say WKA was NBC. The Ankeny court's misinterpretation of the MvH dicta was cited in dicta as justification for including Barry in the class about whom the MVH court said there were doubts that they were NBC and Ankeny resolved those doubt in favor of Barry.
Again, the doubts in MvH were clearly whether persons with alien or foreigner parents were CITIZENS, not whether they were NBC, which they could not be under the MvH holding that was used to place Mrs. Minor in a class of citizens...that being NBC. This NBC class was DISTINGUISHED from the class that had one or more aliens or foreigners as parents.
Note that by their own admission, neither the Ankeny court nor Malihi were able to cite a single federal cast affirming their claim that WKA set a precedent NBC definition under which Barry is NBC. Not one federal citation in over 110 years!