December 10, 2025
Citizenship Clause Surreality: The clause’s own author said it doesn’t include aliens
By Selwyn Duke
Early in my commentary career, I found myself debating the meaning of one of my articles in an online chat with a woman who’d read the piece.
Why the argument?
Well, I was mischievous, I’ll confess, and, having a little fun, didn’t tell her I was the author. Towards our interaction’s conclusion, she told me, quite confidently, that I didn’t understand what the writer was trying to say! (I lack self-knowledge, I guess.)
At least, though, inherent in the exchange was the idea that original intent matters. I mention this because people today often behave as if it’s irrelevant. Just consider, for instance, the “birthright citizenship” issue, currently before the Supreme Court.
Do you know that Sen. Jacob Howard of Michigan, a man who coauthored the Citizenship Clause in 1866, clearly explained what we’re all now arguing about? Read on.
For more than 100 years, the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause has been (mis)interpreted to mean that anyone born on U.S. soil — even an illegal alien — is automatically a U.S. citizen.
It’s such an insane standard, and leads to such nation-rending mischief, that we could wonder how the provision’s framers could have legislated such destructiveness.
Well, they didn’t.
In a documented conversation in the U.S. Senate, Howard first explained that he considered the 14th Amendment to simply be
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 by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States.
In other words, it wasn’t meant to alter, just clarify. And then he clarified, saying that his provision
will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons.
It doesn’t get much clearer than that.
more
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/12/citizenship_clause_surreality_the_clause_s_em_own_em_author_said_it_doesn_t_include_aliens.html
