The 14th Amendment is not really relevant to the question.
The 14th Amendment was not intended to, and did not, set up additional
barriers to becoming a citizen. In other words, it does NOT say that
ONLY "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and
subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States
and the State wherein they reside" but that ALL such persons ARE
citizens. (Side comment: There are other ways to become a citizen
other than being born or naturalized in the United States, such as by
being born abroad or in international waters to an American citizen.)
Why? The purpose of the 14th Amendment was to overturn the Dred Scott
decision, which held that Blacks could not be citizens of the United
States but only, if born abroad and 'naturalized' by a State, citizens
of that State.
Thus, the 14th Amendment was intended to make the class of people,
American Blacks, who were born here, or had been naturalized, citizens
of the United States.
In later jurisprudence, issues of how a person could lose their
citizenship, and other similar matters, became part of 14th Amendment
law. Sources are set out below. I hope this was helpful. And maybe
one day I can get paid for these answers!
The best clause-by-clause source on the Constitution, in my view, is
The Constitution of the United States of America
Analysis and Interpretation
Annotations of Cases Decided by the
Supreme Court of the United States
TO JUNE 29, 1992
Prepared by the
Congressional Research Service
Library of Congress
Johnny H. Killian
George A. Costello
Co-Editors
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
WASHINGTON : 1996
http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/senate/constitution/amdt14.html
Here is the section on the first sentence of the 14th Amendment.
FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT
SECTION 1. RIGHTS GUARANTEED
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and
subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States
and the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any
law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of
the
United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life,
liberty,
or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within
its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT
SECTION 1. RIGHTS GUARANTEED:
CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES
In the Dred Scott Case,\1\ Chief Justice Taney for the Court
ruled that United States citizenship was enjoyed by two classes of
individuals: (1) white persons born in the United States as
descendents
of ``persons, who were at the time of the adoption of the Constitution
recognized as citizens in the several States and [who] became also
citizens of this new political body,'' the United States of America,
and
(2) those who, having been ``born outside the dominions of the United
States,'' had migrated thereto and been naturalized therein. The
States
were competent, he continued, to confer state citizenship upon anyone
in
their midst, but they could not make the recipient of such status a
citizen of the United States. The ``Negro,'' or ``African race,''
according to the Chief Justice, was ineligible to attain United States
citizenship, either from a State or by virtue of birth in the United
States, even as a free man descended from a Negro residing as a free
man
in one of the States at the date of ratification of the
Constitution.\2\
Congress, first in Sec. 1 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 \3\ and then
in the first sentence
[[Page 1566]]
of Sec. 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment,\4\ set aside the Dred Scott
holding in a sentence ``declaratory of existing rights, and
affirmative
of existing law. . . .''\5\
\1\Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393, 404-06, 417-18,
419-20 (1857).
\2\The controversy, political as well as constitutional, which
this case stirred and still stirs, is exemplified and analyzed in the
material collected in S. Kutler, The Dred Scott Decision: Law or
Politics? (1967).
\3\``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 . . . shall have the same right[s]. . . .'' Ch.
31, 14 Stat. 27.
\4\The proposed amendment as it passed the House contained no
such provision, and it was decided in the Senate to include language
like that finally adopted. Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. 2560,
2768-69, 2869 (1866). The sponsor of the language said: ``This
amendment
which I have offered is simply declaratory of what I regard as the law
of the land already, that every person born within the limits of the
United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is . . . a citizen
of
the United States.'' Id. at 2890. The legislative history is discussed
at some length in Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U.S. 253, 282-86 (1967)
(Justice
Harlan dissenting).
\5\United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649, 688 (1898).
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While clearly establishing a national rule on national
citizenship and settling a controversy of long standing with regard to
the derivation of national citizenship, the Fourteenth Amendment did
not
obliterate the distinction between national and state citizenship, but
rather preserved it.\6\ The Court has accorded the first sentence of
Sec. 1 a construction in accordance with the congressional intentions,
holding that a child born in the United States of Chinese parents who
themselves were ineligible to be naturalized is nevertheless a citizen
of the United States entitled to all the rights and privileges of
citizenship.\7\ Congress' intent in including the qualifying phrase
``and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,'' was apparently to exclude
from the reach of the language children born of diplomatic
representatives of a foreign state and children born of alien enemies
in
hostile occupation, both recognized exceptions to the common-law rule
of
acquired citizenship by birth,\8\ as well as children of members of
Indian tribes subject to tribal laws.\9\ The lower courts have
generally
held that the citizenship of the parents determines the citizenship of
children born on vessels in United States territorial waters or on the
high seas.\10\
\6\Slaughter-House Cases, 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) 36, 74 (1873).
\7\United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898).
\8\Id. at 682.
\9\Id. at 680-82; Elk v. Wilkins, 112 U.S. 94, 99 (1884).
\10\United States v. Gordon, 25 Fed. Cas. 1364 (C.C.S.D.N.Y.
1861) (No. 15,231); In re Look Tin Sing, 21 F. 905 (C.C.Cal. 1884);
Lam
Mow v. Nagle, 24 F.2d 316 (9th Cir. 1928).
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In Afroyim v. Rusk,\11\ a divided Court extended the force of
this first sentence beyond prior holdings, ruling that it withdrew
[[Page 1567]]
from the Government of the United States the power to expatriate
United
States citizens against their will for any reason. ``[T]he Amendment
can
most reasonably be read as defining a citizenship which a citizen
keeps
unless he voluntarily relinquishes it. Once acquired, this Fourteenth
Amendment citizenship was not to be shifted, canceled, or diluted at
the
will of the Federal Government, the States, or any other government
unit. It is true that the chief interest of the people in giving
permanence and security to citizenship in the Fourteenth Amendment was
the desire to protect Negroes. . . . This undeniable purpose of the
Fourteenth Amendment to make citizenship of Negroes permanent and
secure
would be frustrated by holding that the Government can rob a citizen
of
his citizenship without his consent by simply proceeding to act under
an
implied general power to regulate foreign affairs or some other power
generally granted.''\12\ In a subsequent decision, however, the Court
held that persons who were statutorily naturalized by being born
abroad
of at least one American parent could not claim the protection of the
first sentence of Sec. 1 and that Congress could therefore impose a
reasonable and non-arbitrary condition subsequent upon their continued
retention of United States citizenship.\13\ Between these two
decisions
there is a tension which should call forth further litigation efforts
to
explore the meaning of the citizenship sentence of the Fourteenth
Amendment.
\11\387 U.S. 253 (1967). Though the Court upheld the
involuntary
expatriation of a woman citizen of the United States during her
marriage
to a foreign citizen in Mackenzie v. Hare, 239 U.S. 299 (1915), the
subject first received extended judicial treatment in Perez v.
Brownell,
356 U.S. 44 (1958), in which by a five-to-four decision the Court
upheld
a statute denaturalizing a native-born citizen for having voted in a
foreign election. For the Court, Justice Frankfurter reasoned that
Congress' power to regulate foreign affairs carried with it the
authority to sever the relationship of this country with one of its
citizens to avoid national implication in acts of that citizen which
might embarrass relations with a foreign nation. Id. at 60-62. Three
of
the dissenters denied that Congress had any power to denaturalize. See
discussion supra pp. 272-76. In the years before Afroyim, a series of
decisions had curbed congressional power.
\12\Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U.S. 253, 262-63 (1967). Four
dissenters, Justices Harlan, Clark, Stewart, and White, controverted
the
Court's reliance on the history and meaning of the Fourteenth
Amendment
and reasserted Justice Frankfurter's previous reasoning in Perez. Id.
at
268.
\13\Rogers v. Bellei, 401 U.S. 815 (1971). This, too, was a
five-to-four decision, Justices Blackmun, Harlan, Stewart, and White,
and Chief Justice Burger in the majority, and Justices Black, Douglas,
Brennan, and Marshall dissenting.
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Citizens of the United States within the meaning of this
Amendment must be natural and not artificial persons; a corporate body
is not a citizen of the United States.\14\
\14\Insurance Co. v. New Orleans, 13 Fed. Cas. 67 (C.C.D.La.
1870). Not being citizens of the United States, corporations
accordingly
have been declared unable ``to claim the protection of that clause of
the Fourteenth Amendment which secures the privileges and immunities
of
citizens of the United States against abridgment or impairment by the
law of a State.'' Orient Ins. Co. v. Daggs, 172 U.S. 557, 561 (1869).
This conclusion was in harmony with the earlier holding in Paul v.
Virginia, 75 U.S. (8 Wall.) 168 (1869), to the effect that
corporations
were not within the scope of the privileges and immunities clause of
state citizenship set out in Article IV, Sec. 2. See also Selover,
Bates
& Co. v. Walsh, 226 U.S. 112, 126 (1912); Berea College v. Kentucky,
211
U.S. 45 (1908); Liberty Warehouse Co. v. Tobacco Growers, 276 U.S. 71,
89 (1928); Grosjean v. American Press Co., 297 U.S. 233, 244 (1936).
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