Thread: U.S. VS. WONG KIM ARK: NO CITIZENSHIP(1898)

United States vs Wong Kim Ark189
Denied citizenship because of illegal status!

http://supreme.justia.com/us/169/649/case.html

There's so many posts on this I hope this is not dup.

"The Fox news contributor said this was very important!"

Something like the first Anchor baby law suit as they were cutting the contributor off he said to look up Wong Kim Ark! You guys read way faster than me, Hell they'll all be granted Amnesty by the time I get done reading this! "Hey wait I found this!" "Oh! sorry we've already moved on with our lives!"

I was told the reason that doesn't affect illegals is because the parents were legal residents of the US, despite not being US Citizens, they were still here legally.

This is a monumental document which researches the topic back through centures of law. It does not appear to be intended to addess the issue of whether children of parents illegally in the U.S. are natural-born citizens. However, in my opinion, the language used does affirm that all children born within the U.S. are citizens of it regardless of the legal or illegal presence of their parents in this country. I have quoted a few sections of the decision below.

The words "in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" in the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution must be presumed to have been understood and intended by the Congress which proposed the Amendment, and by the legislatures which adopted it, in the same sense in which the like words had been used by Chief Justice Marshall in the well known case of The Exchange and as the equivalent of the words "within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States," and the converse of the words "out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States" as habitually used in the naturalization acts. This presumption is confirmed by the use of the word "jurisdiction" in the last clause of the same section of the Fourteenth Amendment, which forbids any State to "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." It is impossible to construe the words "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" in the opening sentence, as less comprehensive than the words "within its jurisdiction" in the concluding sentence of the same section; or to hold that persons "within the jurisdiction" of one of the States of the Union are not "subject to the jurisdiction of the United States."
...
The foregoing considerations and authorities irresistibly lead us to these conclusions: the Fourteenth Amendment affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory, in the allegiance and under the protection of the country, including all children here born of resident aliens, with the exceptions or qualifications (as old as the rule itself) of children of foreign sovereigns or their ministers, or born on foreign public ships, or of enemies within and during a hostile occupation of part of our territory, and with the single additional exception of children of members of the Indian tribes owing direct allegiance to their several tribes. The Amendment, in clear words and in manifest intent, includes the children born, within the territory of the United States, of all other persons, of whatever race or color, domiciled within the United States. Every citizen or subject of another country, while domiciled here, is within the allegiance and the protection, and consequently subject to the jurisdiction, of the United States. His allegiance to the United States is direct and immediate, and, although but local and temporary, continuing only so long as he remains within our territory, is yet, in the words of Lord Coke in Calvin's Case, 7 Rep. 6a, "strong enough to make a natural subject, for if he hath issue here, that issue is a natural-born subject;" and his child, as said by Mr. Binney in his essay before quoted, "if born in the country, is as much a citizen as the natural-born child of a citizen, and by operation of the same principle." It can hardly be denied that an alien is completely subject to the political jurisdiction of the country in which he resides -- seeing that, as said by Mr. Webster, when Secretary of State, in his Report to the President on Thrasher's Case in 1851, and since repeated by this court,
...
VI. Whatever considerations, in the absence of a controlling provision of the Constitution, might influence the legislative or the executive branch of the Government to decline to admit persons of the Chinese race to the status of citizens of the United States, there are none that can constrain or permit the judiciary to refuse to give full effect to the peremptory and explicit language of the Fourteenth Amendment, which declares and ordains that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States."

Chinese persons, born out of the United States, remaining subjects of the Emperor of China, and not having become citizens of the United States, are entitled to the protection of, and owe allegiance to, the United States so long as they are permitted by the United States to reside here, and are " subject to the jurisdiction thereof" in the same sense as all other aliens residing in the United States. Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886), 118 U. S. 356; Law Ow Bew v. United States 144 U. S. 47, 144 U. S. 61, 144 U. S. 62; Fong Yue Ting v. United States (1893), 149 U. S. 698, 149 U. S. 724; Lem Moon Sing v. United States (1893), 158 U. S. 538, 158 U. S. 547; Wong Wing v. United States (1896), 163 U. S. 228, 163 U. S. 238.

Bottom line is that it has to be changed one way or another

I still think that it will be the term "under the jurisdiction of"

The meaning has to be interpreted as it was written at the time it was written

The meaning that I heard on it was that "the person had to have their sole allegiance vested in the US to be under its jurisdiction"

Illegals have no allegiance to this country and indeed are foreign nationals who hold their allegiance.

Case in point , illegals always have the services of the foreign consulate of the country they are from , If they were under our sole jurisdiction, they would not be able to do that.