The 14th Amendment does not confer automatic citizenship.
“…The text of the 14th Amendment contains two requirements for acquiring automatic citizenship by birth: one must be born in the United States and be subject to its jurisdiction…
…Was it merely a partial, temporary jurisdiction, such as applies to anyone (except for diplomats) who are subject to our laws while they are within our borders? Or does it instead apply only to those who are subject to a more complete jurisdiction, one which manifests itself as owing allegiance to the United States and not to any foreign power?…
…So which understanding of “subject to the jurisdiction” did the drafters of the 14th Amendment have in mind?
Happily, we don’t need to speculate, as they were asked that very question. They unambiguously stated that it meant “complete” jurisdiction, such as existed under the law at the time, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which excluded from citizenship those born on U.S. soil who were “subject to a foreign power.”
The Supreme Court confirmed that understanding (albeit in dicta) in the first case addressing the 14th Amendment, noting in The Slaughterhouse Cases in 1872 that “[t]he phrase, ‘subject to its jurisdiction’ was intended to exclude from its operation children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States.” It then confirmed that understanding in the 1884 case of Elk v. Wilkins, holding that the “subject to the jurisdiction” phrase required that one be “not merely subject in some respect or degree to the jurisdiction of the United States, but completely subject to their political jurisdiction, and owing them direct and immediate allegiance.” John Elk, the Native American claimant in the case, did not meet that requirement because, as a member of an Indian tribe at his birth, he “owed immediate allegiance to” his tribe and not to the United States.
Thomas Cooley, the leading treatise writer of the era, also confirmed that “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States “meant full and complete jurisdiction to which citizens are generally subject, and not any qualified and partial jurisdiction, such as may consist with allegiance to some other government.” More fundamentally, this understanding of the Citizenship Clause is the only one compatible with the consent of the governed principle articulated in the Declaration of Independence…
…honest scholars will be forced to acknowledge that the Supreme Court has never held that the children of illegal immigrants, or even temporary lawful visitors, are constitutionally entitled to automatic citizenship merely by virtue of their birth in the United States. And they will be forced to acknowledge as true the claim in Trump’s executive order that “the Fourteenth Amendment has never been interpreted [in any formal, binding way] to extend citizenship universally to everyone born in the United States…
…the Supreme Court will now, for the first time, have the opportunity to acknowledge that the Claremont Institute’s long-standing view of the Citizenship Clause is the correct one. With the Court currently composed of more originalist justices than has been the case in more than a century, we anticipate with great optimism a careful and considered assessment of the clause and a restoration of the fundamental notion that ours is a country rooted in consent, not in the old feudal notion of jus soli that was so thoroughly rejected in our Declaration of Independence…”
Related:
Trump Is Right About Birthright Citizenship
“…The 14th Amendment — ratified after the Civil War and ensuring that former slaves were U.S. citizens — provides that “[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” The plaintiffs focus on the first part, but barely glance at the second, arguing that, with few exceptions (such as the children of foreign diplomats in the United States), anyone born in the United States is “subject to its jurisdiction,” simply by virtue of being within its borders.
They do this by relying almost entirely on United States v. Wong Kim Ark, an 1898 U.S. Supreme Court opinion that the plaintiffs get hopelessly wrong. In Wong, the court held that a man born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrants was a U.S. citizen under the 14th Amendment. Omitting some key facts, the plaintiffs argue this means that all children born in the United States of all immigrant parents, with the aforementioned very rare exceptions, automatically are U.S. citizens. Even a cursory read of the opinion, however, shows that the Supreme Court ruled nothing of the sort.
Wong was born in California and lived his entire life in the United States, until he took two trips to China to visit family as an adult. The first time he returned to the United States, he was admitted through customs as a U.S. citizen. A few years later, after visiting China a second time, he was denied reentry after a customs official concluded that he was not a citizen, because his parents were not U.S. citizens when he was born here.
SCOTUS sided with Wong, but for a very important reason the plaintiffs fail to mention: Wong’s parents were legal immigrants to the United States. The entire foundation of the plaintiffs’ argument — that SCOTUS has already upheld birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants by this decision — is therefore completely and obviously wrong…”