they are called racist, dictatorships and a lot worse btw!

To help delineate the difference between the current legal interpretation and the original intent by the authors of "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof," I find it most easily explained by adding the letter S to subjectS.

A lay person reads "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" and is drawn to think "they're subject to the laws of the land." In this case, subject is an adverb.

But the authors were describing subjects - a noun describing "a person who is under the dominion or rule of a sovereign."

By doing this, they actually were avoiding birthright citizenship while assuring that slaves (who were NOT subjects of foreign sovereigns and the sovereign's jurisdiction) were absolutely granted citizenship.

Its kind of an academic difference isn't it? I mean, what defines the subjects of a nation, aren't they just the people subject to that sovereign's rule of law? The carve-outs for diplomats / foreign mariners / invaders all covers those who aren't beholden to our laws, but also those who aren't under our dominion/sovereignty per se. And the question is where does that leave illegal aliens and temporary residents? Neither are our citizens, and while the latter are definitely subject to our laws the former is not necessarily. But are either subjects of our sovereign state? Not so clear.

I tend to agree with the interpretation (or status quo operating model) we've held up for the longest precedence. The amendments should read as plain English, not layered with interpretations. It needs to be updated by We the People through the existing process to redefine as Trump is pushing.


That being said, I think it needs to be changed. It survived this long as global travel was arguably more dangerous and expensive before last ~4 decades for a larger segment of the migrants. Also, the entities exploiting the birthright citizenship not as powerful.

The recent Administration really ruined it TBH. They took what was a small bruise of a problem at the border and turned it into a gaping wound that needs fixing now.

This post was edited by RedFromWinter on Jan 24 2025 07:31am

what about if we grant them 3/5ths citizenship.

[ ] become president
[ ] vote
[X] eligible for draft
[X] social security after 62
[X] call's "football" soccer

I tend to agree with your interpretation, but it is just that: an interpretation, one which goes beyond the plain text of the Constitution. Adding words or letters to constitutional clauses without going through the usual amendment process would open pandora's box. This kind of "originalism on steroids" would imho be not that far removed in practice from a living constitution.

For example, the next time liberals are in charge of government and the Supreme Court (which could admittedly take a long time), they could reinterpret the 2nd amendment to read "a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, their right to bear arms shall not be infringed" and refer to the 14th amendment precedent to justify their approach.


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Regarding the bolded part: how would stateless people be handled then? If somebody is stateless and on US soil, which sovereign's jurisdiction is he/she subject of, if not that of the US? And this is not just an academic "gotcha"-case, it's highly relevant. If birthright citizenship still applied to stateless people, the migrants could just throw away their papers and refuse to admit where they're coming from.

We have a very similar situation here in Europe, where you find piles of thrown-away passports at the Austro-Hungarian and sometimes even German-Austrian border. Once they've made it to Western Europe, asylum seekers intentionally throw away their paperwork so that we have no proof of their country of origin, which in turn means that we have no place to deport them to even if their asylum application is denied.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jan 24 2025 08:49am

In the world of adjudication, the academics matter. Foreign mariners and soldiers can also be here legally, whose presence is covered by SOFAs, no different than Americans based in Germany, South Korea, the UK, etc. Their children are born American, because their parents are subjects of American jurisdiction. Neither invaders nor legally stationed/visiting troop's kids gain US citizenship because in both cases, the parents are subjects of a foreign jurisdiction.

I'm not advocating addings the letter S other than for illustrative purposes to help show the authors' intent. The same authors also wrote the Civil Rights Act of 1866 a few months earlier. You can read about it on Wikipedia and see their plain intent.

Huh, interesting; I wasn't aware of such a direct context. In that case, the door is wide open for the Supreme Court to arrive at the common sense ruling while using a standard originalist approach.

For highly researched further reading: https://static.heritage.org/legal-and-judicial/birthright-citizenship/Law%20Review%20Final%20Print.pdf