There are serious problems with the conceptual organization that our Constitution prescribes for our system of government. At face value the Constitution respects due process and equal protection, but at the same time, the Constitution is (a) written in English and (b) interpreted by elected officials.
In many cases, you don't enjoy the same civil protections as "real" citizens until you convince the electorate to support public servants who recognize (a) that you, a person or class of people, share those features of civic personhood that define those people who already enjoy the full civil rights of American citizenship, and (b) that "treating you the same" literally means "treating you the same" in the most direct way in written language and actual operation.
The only people who were granted full citizenship at this country's birth were white men. The default assumption has often been that you do not have rights until you convince at least a significant minority of existing citizens that you deserve citizenship as much as they. The Constitution's prescription for due process and democratic election has an interesting consequence: we have due process in the sense that classes of people often have to perform due diligence demonstrating their humanity before government recognizes their rights. It's different in spirit from "innocent until proven guilty"; it's sub-human creature until proven, to a hostile and skeptical crowd, human.
Citizenship is a club that often assumes a priori that prospective applicants outside its membership deserve to be excluded.
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