The Citizenship Clause has conventionally been taken to require U.S. citizenship generally to be accorded automatically to any child born within the United States, regardless of the citizenship or status of the child's parents. To uphold a statute limiting birthright citizenship, it would also appear that the Court would have to find either (1) that the discussion in Wong Kim Ark apparently supporting the conventional interpretation of birthright citizenship was mere dicta, not binding precedent, and the case's holding was limited to the facts of that case; or (2) that Wong Kim Ark incorrectly interpreted the Citizenship Clause, at least in some respects, and should be overruled. If a statute could not change the meaning of the Citizenship Clause, then a constitutional amendment, as some have proposed, would have the power to do so. That is what it means. By no means. It declared that a member of an Indian tribe was born owing allegiance to that tribe rather than to the United States, and tribes were not fully subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. More than a year after the case was argued, Justice Horace Gray found for Wong Kim Ark in an opinion that:
traced the development of the English common law with regard to jus soli , and countered the argument that it had been superseded by jus sanguinis ; read the original Constitution's references to citizenship in light of the common law while reviewing pre-Fourteenth Amendment judicial decisions on citizenship; delved into the legislative history of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment; reviewed interpretations of the Citizenship Clause by lower federal and state courts and the executive branch; analyzed and distinguished the Slaughter-House Cases and Elk v. Wilkins ; and stated:
The foregoing considerations and authorities irresistibly lead us to these conclusions: The Fourteenth Amendment affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory, in the allegiance and under the protection of the country, including all children here born of resident aliens, with the exceptions or qualifications (as old as the rule itself) of children of foreign sovereigns or their ministers, or born on foreign public ships, or of enemies within and during a hostile occupation of part of our territory, and with the single additional exception of children of members of the Indian tribes owing direct allegiance to their several tribes. While the threshold inquiry in Plyler centered on the "person within [a state's] jurisdiction" language of the Equal Protection Clause, the Court also analogized that phrase to the use of "jurisdiction" in the Citizenship Clause, in a footnote, stating: 
Although we have not previously focused on the intended meaning of this phrase ["within its jurisdiction"], we have had occasion to examine the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment, which provides that "[all] persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof , are citizens of the United States…." Cases on Birthright Citizenship in U.S. Two Competing Interpretations of the Citizenship Clause

There are, broadly speaking, two sides to the current legal debate over whether the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires the automatic granting of U.S. citizenship to all persons born in the United States, including those born to unlawfully or temporarily present aliens. Legally, the "jurisdiction" referred to by the Citizenship Clause is territorial jurisdiction, which is the power of a sovereign to enforce its laws within its territorial limits. This conventional interpretation has been called the "ascriptive" view (at least by some opponents) because it determines citizenship by the objective geographical circumstances of a person's birth. The "jurisdiction" referred to by the Citizenship Clause, in this view, is a more "complete" jurisdiction that entails undivided allegiance. The bills would amend Section 301 of the Immigration and Nationality Act to provide, applicable prospectively as of the date of enactment, that:
Acknowledging the right of birthright citizenship established by section 1 of the 14 th amendment to the Constitution, a person born in the United States shall be considered 'subject to the jurisdiction' of the United States for purposes of subsection (a)(1) if the person is born in the United States of parents, one of whom is—
(1) a citizen or national of the United States;
(2) an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence in the United States whose residence is in the United States; or
(3) an alien performing active service in the armed forces…. Some commentators have testified before Congress that they believe a statute denying birthright citizenship to children of unlawfully present aliens would likely survive constitutional challenge. Nevertheless, a number of hurdles to such bills likely remain, including but not limited to the weight of the legislative history of the Fourteenth Amendment, the extensive discussion in Wong Kim Ark , the statements in various cases defining "jurisdiction" more often on the basis of territory rather than undivided allegiance, and the embrace of the prevailing birthright citizenship interpretation by more than a century of subsequent law and practice.
The first clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, known as the Citizenship Clause, provides that "[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." This generally has been taken to mean that any person born in the United States automatically gains U.S. citizenship, regardless of the citizenship or immigration status of the person's parents, with limited exceptions such as children born to recognized foreign diplomats. The current rule is often called "birthright citizenship."
However, driven in part by concerns about unauthorized immigration, some have questioned this understanding of the Citizenship Clause, and in particular the meaning of "subject to the jurisdiction [of the United States]." Proponents of a narrower reinterpretation of that phrase argue that the term "jurisdiction" can have multiple meanings, and that in the Citizenship Clause, "jurisdiction" should be read to mean "complete jurisdiction" based on undivided allegiance and the mutual consent of the sovereign and the subject. This has been termed a "consensual" approach to citizenship. Conversely, proponents of the conventional view interpret the term "jurisdiction" to mean territorial jurisdiction, that is, the authority of a sovereign to enforce its laws within its boundaries. Under the conventional rule, citizenship is ascribed to a person at birth on the basis of the geographic location of that person's birth in the United States. This birthright citizenship rule has sometimes been termed an "ascriptive" approach to citizenship.
Proponents of either side of this legal debate argue that a variety of sources and arguments support their respective positions. The two approaches differ in their interpretations of pre-Revolutionary English common law, pre-Civil War understandings of citizenship, the legislative history of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and subsequent case law. Two key Supreme Court cases in particular, Elk v. Wilkins (1884) and United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), interpreted the Citizenship Clause. Elk held that a member of a recognized Indian tribe was outside the scope of the Citizenship Clause because he was born owing allegiance to the tribe, rather than the United States, and the tribe was a political community not fully subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. Wong Kim Ark held that a person born in the United States to resident aliens became a U.S. citizen at birth, even when the person's parents were barred from ever naturalizing. However, some argue that Wong Kim Ark's statements limiting the exceptions to birthright citizenship were not necessary to its holding, and that no Supreme Court case has ever squarely held that the Citizenship Clause requires a broad view of jurisdiction that extends birthright citizenship to children of unlawfully or temporarily present aliens. Twentieth and 21st century case law also can be seen to support the conventional interpretation of the Citizenship Clause, but again, not in direct case holdings.
Bills have been introduced since the early1990s to deny birthright citizenship to persons born in the United States to aliens other than lawful permanent residents. While a few proposals have suggested constitutional amendments, most seek to change the birthright citizenship rule by statute. It would likely fall to federal courts to determine whether such a statute could be upheld as constitutional. The weight of the legislative history of the Fourteenth Amendment, the analysis and discussion in Wong Kim Ark, the statements in various cases defining "jurisdiction" more often on the basis of territory rather than undivided allegiance, and the embrace of the prevailing birthright citizenship interpretation by more than a century of subsequent law, would probably factor against the constitutionality of a statute limiting birthright citizenship. Nevertheless, the scope of the guarantee of the Citizenship Clause remains a legal question of great interest and importance to many.