The text says this -
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.
The ruling in Elk for Indians was a result of this:
This view is confirmed by the second section of the Fourteenth Amendment, which provides that
"Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed."
Indians were a separate class mentioned in the 14th amendment.
The ruling in Wong Kim Ark lays out a rather extensive history of the laws and discussions leading up to the 14th amendment.
During the debates in the senate in January ary and February, 1866, upon the civil rights bill, Mr. Trumbull, the chairman of the committee which reported the bill, moved to amend the first sentence thereof so as to read: 'All persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States, without distinction of color.' Mr. Cowan, of Pennsylvania, asked 'whether it will not have the effect of naturalizing the children of Chinese and Gypsies, born in this country?' Mr. Trumbull answered, 'Undoubtedly;' and asked, 'Is not the child born in this country of German parents a citizen?' Mr.C owan replied, 'The children of German parents are citizens; but Germans are not Chinese.' Mr. Trumbull rejoined, 'The law makes no such distinction, and the child of an Asiatic is just as much a citizen as the child of a European.'
Then the ruling also points out the groups that do not get birth citizenship.
The real object of the fourteenth amendment of the constitution, in qualifying the words 'all persons born in the United States' by the addition 'and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,' would appear to have been to exclude, by the fewest and fittest words (besides children of members of the Indian tribes, standing in a peculiar relation to the national government, unknown to the common law), the two classes of cases,—children born of alien enemies in hostile occupation, and children of diplomatic representatives of a foreign state,—both of which, as has already been shown, by the law of England and by our own law, from the time of the first settlement of the English colonies in America, had been recognized exceptions to the fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the country. Calvin's Case, 7 Coke, 1, 18b; Cockb. Nat. 7; Dicey, Confl. Laws, 177; Inglis v. Sailors' Snug Harbor, 3 Pet. 99, 155; 2 Kent, Comm. 39, 42.
The ruling also points out that Elk only applies to Indians and does not apply to foreigners in the US.
The decision in Elk v. Wilkins concerned only members of the Indian tribes within the United States, and had no tendency to deny citizenship to children born in the United States of foreign parents of Caucasian, African, or Mongolian descent, not in the diplomatic service of a foreign country.
