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Notes -
No, it could mean that there was no bar on the US refusing to treat expatriates as citizens. I agree that it's an unlikely meaning but it doesn't render the clause surplusage.
Usually the meaning is taken to be that they were subject to US jurisdiction at the time of birth (or naturalization I suppose, but I don't see how they could not be) -- so not children of diplomats or invading armies. But I don't know if that was the original meaning.
The case that "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" is about children of diplomats and invading armies - and in the US context also members of quasi-sovereign Indian tribes, who didn't get birthright citizenship until 1924 - is that those were the exceptions to birthright citizenship under English common law at the time of the founding. (Incidentally, the UK didn't abolish birthright citizenship until 1983)
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