[jcranmer]

Uh, you're wrong.

The USA has both jus sanguinis (you're a citizen because your parents were) and jus soli (you're a citizen because you were born in the US). The jus soli provision is written into the Constitution to prevent Southern states from trying to deny citizenship to emancipated slaves via a grandfather-like clause; if you were born in South Carolina, you are a citizen from birth of both the US and South Carolina, and there's nothing South Carolina can do about that.

If you are born to US-citizen parents in, say, France, you are automatically a US citizen, and you can get a US passport even if you haven't been to the US for the first 30 years of your life. The rules become more complex the more tenuous the connection becomes, but the US does apply a jus sanguinis path to citizenship as well.

[tialaramex]

I evidently had this completely wrong, I can't now correct it, so I've upvoted those pointing out that it's wrong.

[kevin_b_er]

We'll have jus soli until corruption of the Executive and Legislative branches permits a full take over of the Judicial branch and it kills the 14th amendment through clever wordsmithing.