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If the law says that two US citizen parents give you the right to citizenship at birth, that’s what I’d call a natural-born citizen. If this weren’t true, all the kids born of soldiers overseas would not be natural born citizens. This concept of citizenship by birth when born outside the US has been in place since the 1700s.

My son was born in France while I was stationed there in the US Army. My wife and I are native citizens of the USA. There was a consular agreement between the USA and France where he had dual citizenship but France relinquished any claim to him. It has been my understanding that he is considered natural born And McCain probably is too.

If the law says that two US citizen parents give you the right to citizenship at birth, that’s what I’d call a natural-born citizen. If this weren’t true, all the kids born of soldiers overseas would not be natural born citizens. This concept of citizenship by birth when born outside the US has been in place since the 1700s.

OK. How about a citzenship statute that says all persons born with blue eyes within 100 miles east of the Yellow River are US Citizens at birth. Natural born? Any doubt that Congress has the power to enact such a statute? Do you think it likely the Supreme Court would hold they were Natural Born for purposes of Article II, Sec. 1, par. 4 even if they had never set foot in the United States?

That's why Constitutional Lawyers don't think the citizenship statute controls the Constitutional issue. I don't.

Unfair to military service? Most military do not take their wives--particularly pregnant wives. But unfair to the children like McCain--yes. That's why you have the amendment process for the Constitution.

"If the law says that two US citizen parents give you the right to citizenship at birth, that’s what I’d call a natural-born citizen. If this weren’t true, all the kids born of soldiers overseas would not be natural born citizens. This concept of citizenship by birth when born outside the US has been in place since the 1700s.

IMO there IS and needs to be a difference between Citizenship at birth and Natural-born citizen in order to be President of the U.S. My reasoning is this. Say a person is born of two U.S. citizens but those two U.S. citizens have lived in say France, or Germany or where ever for many, many, many, years and their son was raised there from the time he was born until the age of 35. He then comes to the U.S. and decides to run as President. Now this persons culture and ideas would have been formed by the culture and ideas from where he grew up. This may or may not be a problem, but it very well could be. We definitely need people who are loyal to the U.S. and no where else.