[Carry_Okie]

The correct answer to anchor babies is in the US Constitution, as written. The Slaughterhouse Cases are the first Supreme Court interpretation of the 14th Amendment on record. The author of the majority opinion is a contemporary of those who drafted and debated the Amendment. The following text is from the majority opinion (about 3/4 of the way down the linked source page):

http://www2.law.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/foliocgi.exe/historic/query=[group+f_slavery!3A]/doc/{@6621}/hit_headings/words=4

Slaughterhouse Cases, 83 U.S. 36 (1872) (USSC+)
Opinions
MILLER, J., Opinion of the Court

"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."

The first observation we have to make on this clause is that it puts at rest both the questions which we stated to have been the subject of differences of opinion. It declares that persons may be citizens of the United States without regard to their citizenship of a particular State, and it overturns the Dred Scott decision by making all persons born within the United States and subject to its jurisdiction citizens of the United States. That its main purpose was to establish the citizenship of the negro can admit of no doubt. The phrase, "subject to its jurisdiction" was intended to exclude from its operation children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States.

[Verginius Rufus]

The Supreme Court opinion in the Slaughterhouse cases is very interesting.

Where do you draw the line? It looks like it should allow denial of U.S. citizenship to the children of illegal aliens or Asian tourists, but what about legal immigrants who are intending to become citizens but haven't been in the U.S. long enough to complete the process?

During the heyday of European immigration to the U.S. in the decades before 1921, there were a lot of children born to immigrants who grew up as Americans. Many of them gave their lives for the United States in WWI or WWII, or served honorably before producing hordes of monolingual third-generation Americans. Is the citizenship status of people born in the U.S. to legal immigrants to be questioned?