The Language of the Fourteenth Amendment What all the hoopla is about is the simple wording that constitutes Amendment XIV, Section 1, Clause One of the Constitution? "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside." This modest statement makes it plain that persons born in the United States, who are subject to the jurisdiction of another country, are not American citizens. So babies born to foreign nationals who are subject to the jurisdiction of China, for example, are Chinese citizens, because they — like their parents — are subject to the jurisdiction of China. Since ex-slaves were either born in the United States or immigrated into the country legally — albeit as the property of slavers at the time of their coming — all these people were, by law, considered subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. Freed slaves were, therefore, recognized as natural-born or naturalized U.S. citizens, according to the text of the Fourteenth Amendment. The authors of the amendment never intended to reward childbearing lawbreakers who entered the country illegally by making their offspring citizens of the United States.