Birthright Citizenship and Alternate History
When I was studying the Constitution to pass the required tests to graduate from eighth great and from high school, we were taught that "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" in the Fourteenth Amendment meant being subject to the laws of the US, and that the only people being excluded were persons with diplomatic immunity and their children. (In one of these classes it led to a discussion of the risks of going abroad without a clear understanding of the laws and customs of the area you are visiting, because you will be held to them and ignorance is no excuse). In both Constitution classes, the modern interpretation was presented as having been the understood situation from the ratification of the Amendment, and as being intended to extend to the children of freedmen and -women the situation that prevailed to the children of white persons, both native-born and immigrants from Europe, since the beginning of the Republic -- that if you were born here, you were a citizen from birth.
Now that this interpretation is being challenged, and documents written by the drafters of the Fourteenth Amendment have been presented as evidence that it was never intended that mere presence on US soil at time of birth automatically made a person a US citizen. However, the documents I've seen seem to focus primarily upon other groups who were not considered "white" at that point, particularly the various Native American tribes and immigrants from East Asia, particularly from China. That makes me wonder what the status of US-born children of immigrants from Europe was at various periods when large numbers of immigrants were welcomed into the US, with the principle qualifications for admission being "is this person healthy and unlikely to become a public charge?"
When I was doing a series of articles on famous immigrants, I recall that some of them immigrated as children with their families, and comments about siblings born after the family's arrival in the US not needing to be naturalized, because they were automatically citizens by virtue of their birth in the US. David Sarnoff in particular sticks in my mind, although I no longer have the source materials to hand (they were borrowed from the local public library) -- however, he immigrated in 1900, a generation after the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, so his younger siblings' situation offers no proof for earlier precedents, closer to the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, or perhaps even more important, prior to the Civil War (frex, what was the status of children born in the US of Irish immigrants who fled the Potato Famine?).
And then I realized that, if the current interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment were in fact of relatively recent origin, and previously the US-born children of immigrants who had not yet renounced their prior allegiances as part of naturalization were still held to owe allegiance along with parents to the Old Country, and thus not receive automatic US citizenship, it would put a huge hole in two alternate histories: Joe Steele by Harry Turtledove, and "Donovan Sent Us," by Gene Wolfe. Both have the Point of Departure in the backstory: Beso Jugashvili decides to emigrate from the Russian Empire to sunny California, just in time for Joseph to be born in the US, and Lady Randolph Churchill (socialite Jennie Jerome) made a visit home to the US just in time for Winston to be born here, resulting in both of these men being considered native-born US citizens. This is essential given that both works of fiction involve the alternate versions of the famous foreign leaders in the US Presidency. In Joe Steele, the alternate Stalin becomes President instead of FDR, and his version of the New Deal is stained by the thuggish cruelty we associate with Stalin in this world, if somewhat moderated by American culture, while in "Donovan Sent Us," the alternate Winston Churchill is being rescued from Nazi-overrun England so he can run against a pro-Nazi President in the upcoming election.
Now that this interpretation is being challenged, and documents written by the drafters of the Fourteenth Amendment have been presented as evidence that it was never intended that mere presence on US soil at time of birth automatically made a person a US citizen. However, the documents I've seen seem to focus primarily upon other groups who were not considered "white" at that point, particularly the various Native American tribes and immigrants from East Asia, particularly from China. That makes me wonder what the status of US-born children of immigrants from Europe was at various periods when large numbers of immigrants were welcomed into the US, with the principle qualifications for admission being "is this person healthy and unlikely to become a public charge?"
When I was doing a series of articles on famous immigrants, I recall that some of them immigrated as children with their families, and comments about siblings born after the family's arrival in the US not needing to be naturalized, because they were automatically citizens by virtue of their birth in the US. David Sarnoff in particular sticks in my mind, although I no longer have the source materials to hand (they were borrowed from the local public library) -- however, he immigrated in 1900, a generation after the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, so his younger siblings' situation offers no proof for earlier precedents, closer to the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, or perhaps even more important, prior to the Civil War (frex, what was the status of children born in the US of Irish immigrants who fled the Potato Famine?).
And then I realized that, if the current interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment were in fact of relatively recent origin, and previously the US-born children of immigrants who had not yet renounced their prior allegiances as part of naturalization were still held to owe allegiance along with parents to the Old Country, and thus not receive automatic US citizenship, it would put a huge hole in two alternate histories: Joe Steele by Harry Turtledove, and "Donovan Sent Us," by Gene Wolfe. Both have the Point of Departure in the backstory: Beso Jugashvili decides to emigrate from the Russian Empire to sunny California, just in time for Joseph to be born in the US, and Lady Randolph Churchill (socialite Jennie Jerome) made a visit home to the US just in time for Winston to be born here, resulting in both of these men being considered native-born US citizens. This is essential given that both works of fiction involve the alternate versions of the famous foreign leaders in the US Presidency. In Joe Steele, the alternate Stalin becomes President instead of FDR, and his version of the New Deal is stained by the thuggish cruelty we associate with Stalin in this world, if somewhat moderated by American culture, while in "Donovan Sent Us," the alternate Winston Churchill is being rescued from Nazi-overrun England so he can run against a pro-Nazi President in the upcoming election.