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To: sten

Yes. “Natural born” means the individual is a citizen at the moment of birth. “Naturalized” is a person who was once a citizen of another country and became a US citizen.

Until the 14th Amendment, a newborn’s citizenship status was determined by the citizenship status of his parents. This was standard policy in the West going back to the days of the Roman Republic. The 14th Amendment replaced that policy with a geographic policy. One simply had to be born in the United States to be a citizen at birth. This was done so that Southern Democrats could not use grandfather clauses to deny citizenship to blacks. A good idea at the time, it has since lead to anchor babies.


57 posted on 04/27/2011 7:34:05 PM PDT by bobjam
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To: bobjam

“Until the 14th Amendment, a newborn’s citizenship status was determined by the citizenship status of his parents.”

Not true. The 14th was written to clarify the position of blacks, but citizenship by birth had always been recognized in the USA.


62 posted on 04/27/2011 7:38:42 PM PDT by Mr Rogers (Poor history is better than good fiction, and anything with lots of horses is better still)
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