There are two ways to read those remarks but it is worthy of only a little bit of time because his remarks are certainly not dispositive of the meaning of the fourteenth amendment. There were several states and two houses of the federal legislature involved. But let's spend some time, your way is to read it as follows:
“This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, [and those] who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers.”
But this way of reading those remarks which were not prepared in advance is no more compelling than to read them this way:
“This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, [because they] belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers.”
Ambassadors and foreign ministers ex officio owe their loyalty to a foreign power. By treaty they are not subject to American laws, therefore they are not "subject to jurisdiction" as are children born of illegal aliens who most certainly fall under the power of American laws no matter where their actual loyalty might lie. The fourteenth amendment does not undertake to psychoanalyze babies born in the United States. It does not undertake to psychoanalyze the mindset of ambassadors and foreign ministers who are regarded by definition to have foreign loyalties. It states a simple rule.
For the record, before I am attacked for being a heretic, I deplore the fact of birthright citizenship and I fear it when coupled with chain migration. I simply have to say what I believe and go where logic and the rulings of the Supreme Court and other courts take me. I wish it were otherwise.
