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Notes -
There is a strong preference ton of render any passage irrelevant. You can see this in Heller where the opening clause was heavily debated as surplusage or meaningful.
Irrelevant for the birth-right citizenship debate, I should have clarified that.
It is meaningful, but it's there to address a completely different issue. The debate is about whether the US has anything to do with the babies born on the US soil, but the amendment is about people for whom it's already been decided. It's downstream from the decision.
It does imply that it is possible to get US citizenship by being born in the US (as opposed to going through naturalization process), but not that being born is the only requirement. And that's what the whole debate is about.
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