One of the nitwits in last night’s debate said he was the son of legal immigrants. I think it was Pawlenty? Doesn’t that disqualify him as “natural born”?
Not if they were naturalized at the time of his birth.
Not if they were both naturalized as US citizens by the time he was born.
You may well have thought of America as being an immigrant country way back when, but that's nothing compared to the last 75 years when we had influxes of refugees from the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, and then from the rise of the Nazis, and then from the destruction of Europe.
We became a place of sacred refuge ~ and there you have them ~ behold the children of the refugees and the displaced.
We have a neighbor who had just been born on a boat out in the South China Sea packed to the gunnels with Viet Namese refugees ~ the "Boat People".
A Malaysian navy ship came near them and they asked to be let on board ~ they were refused with advice ~ the people were told they couldn't help them unless their ship was sinking.
The young man says according to his mother and father there were holes knocked in the bottom of the boat instantly, and they were all taken on board the Malaysian boat.
Eventually after living in various refugee camps maintained by different countries they came here, and they have no intention of moving away ever again.
Someday we will have a person of Viet Namese ancestry run for President. He or she will have grown up on stories about grandpa's birth on that boat, and the long journey through the camps.
That grandfather will not have had a birth certificate at all.