Mr Rogers wrote:
“Here is the short version, for those who find reading a chore:
“It thus clearly appears that, by the law of England for the last three centuries, beginning before the settlement of this country and continuing to the present day, aliens, while residing in the dominions possessed by the Crown of England, were within the allegiance, the obedience, the faith or loyalty, the protection, the power, the jurisdiction of the English Sovereign, and therefore every child born in England of alien parents was a natural-born subject unless the child of an ambassador or other diplomatic agent of a foreign State or of an alien enemy in hostile occupation of the place where the child was born.
III. The same rule was in force in all the English Colonies upon this continent down to the time of the Declaration of Independence, and in the United States afterwards, and continued to prevail under the Constitution as originally established.”
If two paragraphs is too much, here is the one sentence version:
“The same rule was in force in all the English Colonies upon this continent down to the time of the Declaration of Independence, and in the United States afterwards, and continued to prevail under the Constitution as originally established.”
My response:
That is easily disputed by actual facts. Every child born in the U.S. was NOT a natural-born citizen in the late 18th century and for even most of the 19th century. Some children born in the U.S. were not even citizens, at all. Blacks were not provided birthright citizenship until the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and subsequently the 14th Amendment, and Native Americans were not provided birthright citizenship until the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.
As discussed in WKA, blacks were considered property and thus could not be citizens, while Indians were treated separately in the Constitution, being members of foreign nations inside the USA.
The critical statement remains:
““The same rule [the rule applying to natural born subjects] was in force in all the English Colonies upon this continent down to the time of the Declaration of Independence, and in the United States afterwards, and continued to prevail under the Constitution [as natural born citizens, since we were no longer subjects] as originally established.”
IOW, the rule applied to subjects in the colonies continued to be applied to citizens after Independence. Thus, NBS = NBC.