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.
Category Archives: Constitutional Terms
Allegiance – Carlisle v. United States, 83 US 147 – Supreme Court 1873
By allegiance is meant the obligation of fidelity and obedience which the individual owes to the government under which he lives, or to his sovereign in return for the protection he receives. It may be an absolute and permanent obligation, or it may be a qualified and temporary one. The citizen or subject owes an absolute and permanent allegiance to his government or sovereign, or at least until, by some open and distinct act, he renounces it and becomes a citizen or subject of another government or another sovereign. The alien, whilst domiciled in the country, owes a local and temporary allegiance, which continues during the period of his residence.
Allegiance- Hale – The history of the pleas
Laying to rest that a child born to an illegal immigrant is not born under the jurisdiction of our nation:
But if an alien the subject of a foreign prince in amity with the king live here and enjoy the benefit of the king’s protection and commit a treason he shall be judged and executed as a traitor for he owes a local alligeance.
and
And this alligeance is either natural from all that are subjects born within the king’s alligeance or local which obligeth all that are resident within the king’s dominions and partake of the benefit of the king’s protection altho strangers born.
Source: Hale – The history of the Pleas of the Crown, Vol I, Chap. X
Allegiance – Foster -Discourse on High Treason
Sect. 2. An Alien whose Sovereign is in Amity with the Crown ofEngland, Residing here and Receiving the Protection of the Law oweth a Local Allegiance to the Crown during the time of his Residence. And if, during that Time He committeth an Offence, which in the Case of a Natural-born Subject would amount to Treason, He may be dealt with as a Traitor. For his Person and Personal Estate are as much under the Protection of the Law as the Natural-born Subject’s: and if He is injured in either, He hath the same Remedy at Law for such Injury.
Source: Foster, Discourse on High Treason
Native and Natural Born Citizenship Explored 