CITIZENSHIP IN THE UNITED STATES. All persons who are within the territorial jurisdiction of a state owe an alle giance to it according to the maxim protects° trahit subjectionem et subjectio pyotectionem, and the existence of this fealty thus imposed is shown in the fact that, according to the public law of all modern constitutionally developed states even aliens may be held guilty of trea son, if, within its territory, they plot or com mit acts against the welfare and existence of the local sovereign. In a narrower sense of the word, however, only those persons are termed citizens or subjects* of a state who owe to it a primary allegiance and one that con tinues wherever the person may be and may be cast off only with the consent of the state concerned.
Viewed from the standpoint of international law, the citizen body of a state consists of all those persons from whom the state claims this primary and permanent allegiance. These per sons, sometimes termed nationals, constitute, so far as other states are concerned, one homo geneous body. They are all equally entitled to the protection of their own government wherever they may be.
When, however, we regard the civitas or body-politic of the state from the domestic or constitutional point of view, it is found that its members may be divided into as many different classes, with as many different public and pri vate rights, as may be deemed just and expedi ent by those who fix the public policy of the particular state in question.
All civilized states make a distinction be tween natural or native born, and naturalized citizens. The native-born citizen is one who has this status imposed upon him by reason of the nationality of his parents or parent, or the which he is born; the naturalized citizen is one who, originally in allegiance to one state, is granted citizenship in another state.
Every sovereign state determines for itself the circumstances which shall be recognized as creating natural or native-born citizenship, as well as the conditions under which an alien may be admitted to membership in its citizen body. Many states adopt as their general prin ciple the jus sanguinis, according to which the children take the citizenship of the father or, if illegitimate, of the mother. Other states
accept the rule of jus soli, according to which a person becomes a citizen of the state within whose territorial limits he is horn. This lat ter rule is constitutionally obligatory upon the United States, the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution providing that *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 This rule, though thus explicitly stated only in 1868, was declara tory of the rule which had been previously ap plied. The qualitying clause *and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" was inserted to cover the cases of children of foreign representatives or other persons entitled to extraterritorial rights while in the United States. So abso lute, otherwise, has this rule of ins soli been declared to he, that children born in the United States of Chinese or Japanese parents are American citizens even though their fathers and mothers are aliens who, under statute law, cannot obtain naturalization.
The rule of jus sanguinis, however, also finds some application in the United States for the constitutional mandate does not operate negatively to the effect that only those persons shall be deemed natural citizens who are born within the jurisdiction of the United States. Thus children born to American parents while abroad are deemed natural citizens if, during minority, they return to the United States with the intention of residing there permanently.
The conditions under which aliens may be come naturalized American citizens are fixed by acts of Congress and have varied from time to time. They are now mainly determined by the laws approved 25 June 1910 and 30 June 1914. These statutes extend the rights of naturalization only to white persons or to those of African nativity or descent. Thus, among others, the Chinese and Japanese do not come within their provisions. The naturalization of Chinese is, indeed, expressly prohibited by a law enacted in 1882.