Because back then, there were no restrictions on immigration. You got here, you were legal. Not until the Chinese Exclusion Act did the government start to try to keep people out for not being "White and Delightsome", as your fake bible says. And even then, the court had to admit, if you were born here, you were a citizen. Even if your parents went back to China and you were a member of an undesireable group.
I already answered these arguments. As usual, you ignore my replies and the facts they present and just repeat your arguments. Here is one of my previous replies to Jihad Joe's nonsense on this issue:
Which means anyone born here is a citizen. Why are we still discussing this?
You would look at a globe of the Earth and say "which means the Earth is flat. Why are we still discussing this?"
You have not explained a single fact that I've documented.
And I ask you again, when did the U.S. ever make immigration illegal? When?
If you don't like it, amend the constitution.
No need. The authors of the 14th Amendment were crystal clear about what the amendment did and did not intend. You just don't like what they specified, so you ignore it.
Neither of whom are immigrants.
Just shaking my head at this illogic. Let's try this: If the authors of the 14th Amendment stipulated that the amendment would not grant citizenship to native peoples who were already here, and if early Supreme Court rulings ruled that the amendment did not even grant citizenship to newborns whose parents were here legally as foreign diplomats, how in the world can you imagine that the amendment was intended to grant citizenship to children whose parents are violating our laws just by being here?
And you keep refusing to distinguish between legal immigrants and illegal immigrants.
You see, birthright citizenship, when America was trying to attract (white) immigrants from Europe, was actually a selling point. Even before the 14th Amendment, the practice of English Common Law was that if you were born here, you were a citizen.
LOL! For one thing, I guess you've never heard of the Naturalization Act of 1790, which was passed just two years after the Constitution was ratified and one year after the Constitution took effect??? Ring any bells?
Under the terms of the act, the vast majority of the illegal immigrants now in our country would not qualify for citizenship.
It took a while for the first generation of American leaders to establish immigration policy after our founding. We were, after all, a new country, and we had just fought a bloody five-year war to gain independence. Again, under the terms of the Naturalization Act of 1790, passed just two years after the Constitution was ratified, nearly all the illegal immigrants now in our country would not qualify for citizenship.
That's the point. You see, prior to the 1950s or so, anyone from Latin America could travel to the US legally. Asians were excluded and there were limits on Europeans from certain countries. We keep shifting the goalposts of who we want and for what reasons.
"That's the point"?! You said this to justify your howler that the U.S. once banned immigration! Your evasion does nothing to explain away your howler, much less justify your bogus argument that the 14th Amendment was intended to give birthright citizenship to children whose parents are here illegally.
And, uh, yeah, we have the right to change our immigration laws as we see fit and in response to changing circumstances, just as other nations do.
FYI, Ireland ended unrestricted birthright citizenship in 2004 after 79% of voters supported a constitutional amendment that made citizenship conditional on the parents' residency and history. The Dominican Republic abolished birthright citizenship in 2013, which removed citizenship from about 200,000 people.
As mentioned in the OP, a number of nations in Europe, Asia, and Africa do
not offer birthright citizenship under any conditions, while others require that at least one parent be a citizen or a lawful permanent resident for the newborn to be granted citizenship. Which nations are we talking about? Well, they include Norway, Sweden, Italy, Greece, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Ireland, Austria, Bulgaria, Serbia, Albania, Denmark, South Korea, Indonesia, Taiwan, and Japan, among others.
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