=Who are Citizens.=--The population of every country is composed of two classes of persons: citizens and aliens. The larger portion of the inhabitants are citizens, but the alien class is considerable in some states of the Union, much more so than formerly, owing to the large influx of immigrants from Europe in recent years.[109] A citizen is one who has been admitted to full membership in the state, though he may not have been given full political privileges, such as the privileges of voting and holding public office. There is a large class of citizens in every state who can neither vote nor hold public office, such, for example, as minors, sometimes illiterate persons, those who have not paid their taxes, those who have been convicted of serious crimes, and others. On the other hand, aliens in some states are allowed to vote and hold office, especially if they have formally declared their intention of becoming citizens. The terms "citizen" and "voter," therefore, are not identical, since there are some citizens who cannot vote and some voters who are not citizens. (See page 125.) [109] The census of New York of 1910 showed that of a total population of 9,000,000 inhabitants there were more than 2,000,000 aliens. =How Citizenship is Acquired.=--Under the Fourteenth Amendment to the federal Constitution, all persons born in the United States[110] are citizens of the United States, and also of the states in which they reside. Persons who come here from abroad may become citizens only by being naturalized. [110] For some purposes, the residences of foreign diplomatic representatives are considered as if belonging to the foreign country represented. Thus a child of the French ambassador, if born in the ambassador's residence at Washington, is born a citizen of France; likewise a child of the United States ambassador at Paris, if born at his residence in France, is nevertheless a natural-born citizen of the United States.