LOL! I know exactly what you mean.
----
Anyway, thanks for the link. The part you posted is interesting, but the first page even more so.
Who is a citizen? What constitutes a citizen of the United States? I have often been pained by the fruitless search in our law books and the records of our courts, for a clear and satisfactory definition of the phrase citizen of the United States. I find no such definition, no authoritive establishment of the meaning of the phrase, neither by a course of judicial decisions in our courts, nor by the continued and consentaneous action of the different branches of our political government.
Opinion of Attorney General Bates, page 1
------
That was just the point. There was legally no such thing as a 'citizen of the United States' prior to the 14th Amendment. The People were Citizens of THESE united States. The founders simply used the term as a way to reference the People of the States.
Whether or not Congress had the Constitutional authority to pass such legislation on a national basis is also a matter for contention.
They have the power to make a uniform rule of naturalization for the States to FOLLOW....not to skip the middle-man to implement national legislation.
Be that as it may, Congress ONLY has authority concerning naturalization. Could one forgive the warping of the Law, ALL the 14th Amendment could Constitutionally be is a one time naturalization act specifically for the former slaves. That's why the man who helped write it listed the 3 categories, so it wouldn't be confused with naturalizing foreigners.
The only difference between this and the one time 'at the time of the adoption of the Constitution provision' in the Presidential clause is that the Presidential proviso does pointedly acknowledge the inclusion to natural-born citizenship of People of that time.
It was not so much that the People were born into it, as much as IT was born into them.
-----
So, no, I don't see anything in the 14th Amendment that creates a perpetual grant of jus soli citizenship [naturalization at birth] to a foreigner or alien who happens to be born in the States.
In the mean time we have to go by the laws on the books.
Congress made 'em, we have to follow 'em.
Pinging for your [possible] interest.