Originally Posted by Stanky:
United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that everyone born in the United States, with exceptions including certain Native Americans, was a U.S. citizen. This decision established an important precedent in its interpretation of the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
Wong Kim Ark, who was born in San Francisco to Chinese parents around 1871, had been denied re-entry to the United States after a trip abroad, under a law restricting Chinese immigration and prohibiting immigrants from China from becoming naturalized U.S. citizens. He challenged the government's refusal to recognize his citizenship, and the Supreme Court ruled in his favor, holding that the citizenship language in the Fourteenth Amendment encompassed essentially everyone born in the U.S.—even the U.S.-born children of foreigners—and could not be limited in its effect by an act of Congress.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...ates_v._Wong_Kim_Ark
A case might be made for original intent because there were no illegal immigrants in 1868 because of the open door immigration policy; but nine lawyers in black robes created a precedent 30 years later.
From Coulter's article:
"It is true that in a divided 1898 case, U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, the Supreme Court granted citizenship to the children born to legal immigrants, with certain exceptions, such as for diplomats. But that decision was so obviously wrong, even the Yale Law Journal ridiculed it.
The majority opinion relied on feudal law regarding citizenship in a monarchy, rather than the Roman law pertaining to a republic -- the illogic of which should be immediately apparent to American history buffs, who will recall an incident in our nation's history known as "the American Revolution."
Citizenship in a monarchy was all about geography -- as it is in countries bristling with lords and vassals, which should not be confused with this country. Thus, under the majority's logic in Wong Kim Ark, children born to American parents traveling in England would not be American citizens, but British subjects. "
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From the opinion of the Court in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark:
<<<In the forefront both of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution and of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the fundamental principle of citizenship by birth within the dominion was reaffirmed in the most explicit and comprehensive terms. The Civil Rights Act, passed at the first session of the Thirty-ninth Congress, began by enacting that "all persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States, and such citizens, of every race and color, without regard to any previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall have the same right, in every State and Territory in the United States, to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties and give evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold and convey real and personal property, and to full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property as is enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains and penalties, and to none other, any law, statute, ordinance, regulation or custom to the contrary notwithstanding.">>>
Act of April 9, 1866, c. 31, § 1; 14 Stat. 27.
That Act preceded the adoption of the 14th amendment by over two years. The opinion continues:
<<<The same Congress, shortly afterwards, evidently thinking it unwise, and perhaps unsafe, to leave so important a declaration of rights to depend upon an ordinary act of legislation, which might be repealed by any subsequent Congress, framed the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, and, on June 16, 1866, by joint resolution, proposed it to the legislatures of the several States, and on July 28, 1868, the Secretary of State issued a proclamation showing it to have been ratified by the legislatures of the requisite number of States.>>>>.
14 Stat. 358; 1 Stat. 708.
So much for legislative intent, then. In the Won Kim Ark case case we have been discussing, and upon which Coulter relied so strongly, the Supreme Court itself interpreted legislative intent lying behind the act of Congress that initiated the Article V process that concluded with the adoption of the 14th Amendment. In so doing, they explicitly recognized the prior Civil Rights Act of 1866, with its all-subsuming language: all persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States, and such citizens, of every race and color...."