[matthewdgreen]

You're trying to impute complexity to a thing in order to achieve a goal that is not achievable. The 1866 Congress that debated the amendment understood and intended that Indian tribal nations would not be covered by the clause because they were separate nations not under the jurisdiction of US law. Here's an example of the debate [1] where they discuss it. Far from making your point, examples like this make it obvious that everyone involved in framing the amendment thought deeply about what "jurisdiction" meant, which is why you can't just assign new meaning like "yeah it means parents have to be citizens."

I really urge you to read the original debate. It isn't like the handwritten notes we get from the 1700s; it's typewritten and the Senators are so thoughtful and utterly precise about what they meant. It's ELI12.

[1] https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc30867/m1/12...

[dnemmers]

Have you read through that link?

I'm not taking a side here, but it injects a couple more words that could imply something else:

[Mr. Howard] (Sen. from MI)

"This amendment which I have offered is simply declaratory as 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 by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States.

This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of embassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons.

It settles the great question of citizenship and removes all doubt as to what persons are or are not citizens of the United States."

(Apologies for any typos as this was hand written.)

[matthewdgreen]

What are the confusing words? You gave a quote that sums up the long-accepted understanding of who's exempt from the citizenship clause:

"This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of embassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons."

They don't mention Indian tribes in that quote, but they mention it elsewhere. Seems completely clear to me.

[dnemmers]

I kept reading pages, and there's plenty of other questionable conclusions:

[Mr. Conness] (Sen. CA)

(Acclaimed for his pro-Chinese immigration views.

Wiki: "In the Senate debate on the 14th Amendment, Conness said “We are entirely ready to accept the provision proposed in this constitutional amendment, that the children begotten of Chinese parents in California … shall be citizens.”

from the link:

"Now, I will say, for the benefit of my friend, that he may know something about the Chinese in future, that this portion of our population, namely, the children of Mongolian parentage, born in California, is very small indeed, and never promises to be large, notwithstanding our near neighborhood to the Celestial land. The habits of those people, and their religion, appear to demand that they all return to their own country at some time or other, either alive or dead. There are, perhaps, in California today about forty thousand Chinese--from forty to forty-five thousand. Those persons return invariably, while others take their places, and, as I before observed, if they do not return alive their bones are carefully gathered up and sent back to the Flowery Land. It is not an unusual circumstance that the clipper ships trading between San Francisco and China carry at a time three or four hundred human remains of these Chinese. When interred in our State they are not interred deep in the earth, but laid very near the surface, and then mounds of earth are laid over them, so that the process of dis-interment is very easy. That is their habit and custom; and as soon as they are fit for transmission to their own country they are taken up with great regularly and sent there. None of the bones are allowed to remain. They will return, then, either living or dead. "

(Sadly the site is now offline.)

[matthewdgreen]

There's nothing terribly confusing here. In fact it's a helpful set of quotes. This is one Senator saying "hey, second-generation Chinese immigrants will be citizens. And that's fine because I don't think there will be too many of them."

[dnemmers]

An additional section from the page provided that I found odd:

[Mr. Cowan] (Sen from PA)

"So far as the courts and the administration of the laws are concerned, I have supposed that every human being within their jurisdiction was in one sense of the word a citizen, that is, a person entitled to protection; but in so far as the right to hold property, particularity the right to acquire title to real estate, was concerned, that was a subject entirely within the control of the States.

It has been so considered in the state of Pennsylvania; and aliens and those who acknowledge no other allegiance, either to the State, or to the General Government, may be limited and circumscribed in that manner.

I have supposed, further, that it was essential to the existence of society itself, and particularly essential to the existence of a free State, that it should have the power, not only of declaring who should exercise political power within its boundaries, but that if it were overrun by another and a different race, it would have the right to absolutely expel them."

[MisterMower]

Can you link to the portion of the debate where everyone agreed on what “under the jurisdiction of” means?

The issue was contentious then as it is now. They wouldn’t have spilled so much ink on the topic if it wasn’t. Your link is proving my point.

[matthewdgreen]

Sure, I already did explain it. They explicitly said that "not under the jurisdiction" would cover children belonging to Indian tribes, the children of ambassadors, and they discussed the need to be able to expel occupying armies. Someone said "what about the kids of Chinese people" and the sponsors said "yep, if we adopt this language they'll get to be citizens too".

None of it's complicated. You could read this as an 8th grader and have no doubt what they were trying to do.

Most of the discussion was of the form "hey, could we add an exception to exclude even more people from citizenship" and then the sponsors would say something like, "yes, we agree that those people aren't excluded under the current language; that adding extra language could exclude those people; and that we don't want to exclude those people or change the language." And then Congress voted for the language exactly as it was originally proposed.