Read the paragraph below Then read it again. Then read the sentence containing the word SUPERFLUOUS and the one that follows it again.
You now know all you will ever need to know about this issue. And you will know that, as usual, Trump is right.
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Although the Constitution of 1787 mentioned citizens, it did not define citizenship. It was in 1868 that a definition of citizenship entered the Constitution with the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. Here is the familiar language: “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.” Thus there are two components to American citizenship: birth or naturalization in the U.S. and being subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. Today, we somehow have come to believe that anyone born within the geographical limits of the U.S. is automatically subject to its jurisdiction; but this renders the jurisdiction clause utterly superfluous. If this had been the intention of the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment, presumably they would have said simply that all persons born or naturalized in the U.S. are thereby citizens.
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Your clarification of an issue clouded by many for over a century has a few problems, though the rejection of citizenship for those born on our soil without reference to the allegiance of their parents is correct.
“Although the Constitution of 1787 mentioned citizens, it did not define citizenship.” That statement is misdirection, though almost certainly not by InterceptPoint who probably trusted pundits who are talented projecting confidence in their scholarship. The Constitution does not contain term definitions (there is but one which was to address the change from monarchy to republic), by design, according to James Madison. That attribute of the Constitution seemed so obvious to its framers that it was not easy to find the citation. I found it on page 37 of Mark Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny though there are many authorities who cite the requirements for our President implying the common-law, U.S. common-law and not Blackstone’s common law, is simply understood.
The reason for not including definitions in the Constitution is similar to a seeming obvious exiom accepted by astronomers. Looking at spectra of billion year old stars must assume that the laws of physics are invariant over time or the physical interpretations are meaningless. Interpreting the meaning of the Constitution whose framers believed it was founded upon Natural Law, laws that would remain valid forever, knew that language is always changing. To remain valid the Constitution must be interpreted in the language familiar to its framers.
This is clearly stated by Chief Justice Waite when he established the meaning of natural born citizenship, the definition used in Wong Kim Ark to distinguish between the naturalized citizens created by the 14th Amendment and natural born citizens created by God when the Constitution required that class of citizenship for our chief executive. After 1776 most children born on our soil were born to citizen parents, parents who chose individual sovereignty rather being subject to a monarch, whose power is inherited, and, in England, is born to at least one alien parent (Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man).
In Article 1 Section 8, our framers designated Congress as the authority with the responsibility to define naturalized citizens. A citizen defined so by Congress is not a natural born citizen. Even a citizen defined as naturalized at birth is defined by men, a changeable definition, and not a citizen by nature or “Natural Law”. Our framers felt that the position of President was too important to the safety The Republic to risk permitting a child born to parents whose sole allegiance was not to our land and Constitution. in the words of the original sponsor for the 14th Amendment, Congressman John Bingham, abolitionist and Judge advocate for the conspiracy trial of Lincoln’s assassins, in one of his speeches to the House explaining the amendment:
“I find no fault with the introductory clause [S 61 Bill], which is simply declaratory of what is written in the Constitution, that every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen….”
This is why Barack Obama never claimed to be a natural born citizen. On Obama’s web site “Fight the Smears” he explained,
“When Barack Obama Jr. was born on Aug. 4,1961, in Honolulu, Kenya was a British colony, still part of the United Kingdom’s dwindling empire. As a Kenyan native, Barack Obama Sr. was a British subject whose citizenship status was governed by The British Nationality Act of 1948. That same act governed the status of Obama Sr.‘s children.
Since Sen. Obama has neither renounced his U.S. citizenship nor sworn an oath of allegiance to Kenya, his Kenyan citizenship automatically expired on Aug. 4,1982.”
Barack, as he himself explained, was born a British Subject. He didn’t accept the validity of the U.S. Constitution, and said so. He considers it if historical interest, but “...it doesn’t allow me to do the things I believe people need”. Congress and the courts should have challenged him but were largely afraid to lose their positions, income, and be attacked, as was Congressman Nathan Deal from Georgia, who did ask for proof of eligibility and was forced resign by the IRS and Justice Department conspiring with the House Judiciary Committee.
Birthright citizenship is incorrectly conflated with “native, or natural born citizens”. Birthright citizenship as it is usually misused means naturalized at birth. Why this is wrong should be pretty obvious to anyone these day. Children of parents whose allegiance is to Sharia law live in our nation. Their parents never had and never could have had, as observant Muslims, sole allegiance to our nation build upon individual sovereignty. Their children travel to the Middle East for kill our soldiers. The same would have been true had the child of Royalists become president when the nation was a toddler.
There are natural born citizens and naturalized citizens. All natural born citizens are citizens but naturalized citizens are not, by definition, natural born citizen. 14th Amendment citizens are naturalized - by definition.
I was more concerned with the political obfuscation of who was eligible to the presidency. Obama is showing us why allegiance is so important, but so far appears not to have created a revolution - yet. This is the time to really understand who we want as citizens because it was always the intention of our framers that our representatives create an “Uniform Rule for Naturalization.”