https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/26/close-the-birthright-citizenship-
The law is full of loopholes. If you do not first secure two witnesses, your last will and testament may not be valid. If a policeman fails in reading the Miranda warning, a criminal’s confession may be thrown out and kept away from the jury. And, through the lawbreaking and evasive maneuvers by their illegal alien parents, young children, through no merit (or choice) of their own, may end up with the very beneficial acquisition of U.S. citizenship.
Birthright citizenship began as an unintended consequence of the language of the 14th Amendment. This beneficent amendment was ratified in the wake of the Civil War to address the former Confederate states’ restrictive “black codes,” which limited the rights of the newly freed slaves. Such laws included provisions limiting the right to bear arms, to travel, to make contracts, and much else, often using roundabout maneuvers, such as racially neutral language that based rights on whether one’s grandparents had a particular right.
Thus, the amendment states broadly, “All 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 amendment goes on to protect all such citizens’ “privileges and immunities,” the right to “life, liberty, and property,” and “equal protection of the laws.”
In other words, this was not an immigration amendment, but rather a law aimed at addressing the particular obstacles that faced the recently freed slaves. While tortured readings of the 14th Amendment have also brought us such abominations as an abstract “right to privacy,” which in turn led to the right to abortion and gay marriage, on the question of citizenship, there is at least a debatable question arising from the text of the amendment itself.
What the Court Has (and Has Not) Said
