I do not mind people posting their OPINIONS on this - but DO NOT state that the legal definition of "natural born citizen" is via JUS SOLI alone. The ARK decision DID NOT settle that question. It DID affirm that ARK was a CITIZEN, however.
From the declaratory paragraph of the decision:
The evident intention, and the necessary effect, of the submission of this case to the decision of the court upon the facts agreed by the parties were to present for determination the SINGLE QUESTION STATED AT THE BEGINNING OF THIS OPINION, namely, whether a child born in the United States, of parent of Chinese descent, who, at the time of his birth, are subjects of the Emperor of China, but have a permanent domicil and residence in the United States, and are there carrying on business, and are not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China, BECOMES AT THE TIME OF HIS BIRTH A CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES. For the reasons above stated, this court is of opinion that the question must be answered in the affirmative.
The QUESTION posed at the beginning of the decision:
The QUESTION presented by the record is whether a child born in the United States, of parents of Chinese descent, who, at the time of his birth, are subjects of the Emperor of China, but have a permanent domicil and residence in the United States, and are there carrying on business, and are not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China, becomes at the time of his birth a citizen of the United States BY VIRTUE OF THE FIRST CLAUSE OF THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT OF THE CONSTITUTION,
All 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.
Here's a bit more from the majority decision that supports jus soli because of our heritage of English common law:
It thus clearly appears that by the law of England for the last three centuries, beginning before the settlement of this country, and continuing to the present day, aliens, while residing in the dominions possessed by the crown of England, were within the allegiance, the obedience, the faith or loyalty, the protection, the power, and the jurisdiction of the English sovereign; and therefore every child born in England of alien parents was a natural-born subject, unless the child of an ambassador or other diplomatic agent of a foreign state, or of an alien enemy in hostile occupation of the place where the child was born. III. The same rule was in force in all the English colonies upon this continent down to the time of the Declaration of Independence, and in the United States afterwards, and continued to prevail under the constitution as originally established.
The Court fully held that just soli held well after the Declaration of Independence and prevailed under the constitution as originally established. Meaning since the founding of these United States.
The Ark case is the definitive case relating to natural born citizenship via jus soli and it is unequivocal, by the statement above of the court: from the English common law foundations of the Nation, natural born citizenship is a function of birthplace, and that held continuously from the colonies through the Declaration of Independence, the Revolution, and the later writing and passage of the constitution.