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Notes -
Well, the question is, what does "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" mean?
The Congressmen pushing the amendment clarified that it meant "subject to the complete jurisdiction thereof", and that it would exclude Indians (who in a sense were subject to the jurisdiction), so then what counts as complete jurisdiction? Many people later in the 19th century believed that people who were only there temporarily were not "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" in the relevant sense.
Hmm.
It's embarrassing to change one's mind, but I think I am coming around a little on this one. I think I'd like to see how the word 'jurisdiction' is used in other statutes contemporary to the Fourteenth Amendment, to get more of a sense of how it would have been read in the 19th century, but I'll grant that it's not crazy to say that, for example, a tourist currently holidaying in the US is not subject to its jurisdiction in the same sense that a permanent resident is.
Unfortunately, jurisdiction is used in more than one sense, which makes this harder.
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