Marco Rubio is far from an “anchor baby”. His parents were here legally. He was born a U.S. citizen to legal residents who soon became naturalized citizens.
Marco Rubio is not a naturalized citizen - he was born a citizen according to U.S. law - which should always reflect our best understanding of natural law.
Natural law is not what was written hundreds of years ago by one man in one book. Those that think it is have little concept of the foundational philosophy of this Republic.
Marco Rubio is a native born U.S. Citizen, he is not a natural born U.S. Citizen, and he is not eligible under the Constitution to serve in the Office of the Vice President or the Office of the President.
Vattel did nothing to originate the definition of natural born citizen, because he was only reporting the already centuries old practice among many nations of restricting certain rights of citizenship only to the children born with two citizen parents within the jurisdiction of the sovereign. This was the law and its practice in earlier centuries of England, before the laws changed the natural born citizen requirement. Many Continental jurisdictions retained the natural born citizen requirement, which was reported by Vattel in his book. The Founding Fathers then used Vattel’s book to provide guidance along with other books to develop the Constitution with guidance from British-English and Continental legal precedents. The natural born citizen clause was clearly and unambiguously asserting a limitation well understood by Continental Europeans of the 18th Century. The Ancien Regime for instance had jurisdictions which did not allow the children born in the French jurisdiction to inherit their parents’ real property, because the parents were foreign born, which was an application of the difference between children native born in France versus natural born in France.
The same distinction carried forward to some post-Revolutionary War States of the United States of America who did not confer state citizenship and thereby U.S. citizenship to children born in the jurisdiction of the state whose parents were not state or U.S. citizens. Yet, the children born in the jurisdiction of the state whose parents were U.S. citizens were natural born citizens of the state and the United States in 1799. The child whose parents were not state and U.S. citizens were not eligible to the Office of the President in 1799, but the natural born children were so eligible in 1799.
The writers of the constitution knew what they meant by Natural Born Citizen since they also exempted anyone currently living here from the requirement. Otherwise no one would be able to serve as Washington, Adams or jefferson did. They had to include a qualifier because they meant what they said: a natural born citizen has no blood ties to any other country through his or her parents. Obama does not meet that test and neither do Rubio or Jindal.