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To: yldstrk

wow, so if I am on vacation while pregnant, say I am in the Bahamas chilling on the beach, and my baby comes early, my baby is not a citizen? Just want to clarify....


Of course your child would be a U.S. citizen, just not a natural born citizen.


100 posted on 03/09/2013 8:57:56 AM PST by Hotlanta Mike ("Governing a great natiorn is like cooking a small fish - too much handling will spoil it." Lao Tzu)
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To: Hotlanta Mike

You are correct. What most people refuse to understand is that at the TIME the Constitution was signed there was NO dual citizenship at all. Not in Great Britain or in the new US. Sorry you all-inclusive people, but that is an absolute fact.

For the under-informed:

AFTER the US Constitution was ratified a law had to be created to deal with children born to US citizens traveling off of US soil. A law (Act) had to be CREATED. The first Act dealing with such allowed that a child born to a US citizen FATHER (I know men don’t have babies, so don’t be stupid) born abroad was a citizen BUT the child had to declare his/her allegiance at the age of 21 - because back then some countries claimed that ANY child born there (unless to an Ambassador) was a subject/citizen of that country. And back then if a alien woman married a citizen man, she took on his character (country). Later legislators changed the language to include that either/or/both parents being US citizens could pass US citizenship to the child. That was done for several reasons-won’t detail now. Keep on mind all of this was done well AFTER the Constitution was ratified. And that child born abroad would still be required to declare allegiance at 21 years of age.

The thing is that there was NO dual citizenship in the US back then. Technically there is none officially recognized now either. Look that up - it’s easy. Although the US does not officially recognize dual citizens, they do not actively discourage it either.

Consider the original wording in Article 2 only required the President “unless he now be a Citizen of one of the States, or hereafter be born a Citizen of the United States.” That was the exact wording. They felt it was not restrictive enough and so it was changed.

NONE of the post 1787 Acts or laws/amendments was ever intended to change the Article 2 requirement. In fact, it is easily found in the old literature of that time that there were only two types of US citizens, natural or created by statue.

Binney (2nd edition):
“THE ALIENIGENE
OF THE UNITED STATES.
IT does not, probably, occur to the American families
who are visiting Europe in great numbers, and remain-
ing there, frequently, for a year or more, that all their
children born in a foreign country, are ALIENS, and
when they return home, will return under all the disa-
bilities of aliens. Yet this is indisputably the case ; for
it is not worth while to consider the only exception to
this rule that exists under the laws of the United States,
viz., the case of a ‘child so born, whose parents were
citizens of the United States, on or before the 14th of
April, 1802.”

AND: “The state of the law in the United States is easily
deduced. -The notion that there is any common law
principle to naturalize the children born in foreign
countries, of native-born American father and mother,
father or mother, must be discarded. There is not and
never was any such common law principle. But the
common law principle of allegiance, was the law of all
the States at the time of the Revolution, and at the
adoption of the Constitution; and by that principle the
citizens of the United States are, with the exceptions
before mentioned, such only as are either born or made
so, born within the limits and under the urisdiction of
the United States, or naturalized by the authority of
law, either in one of the States before the Constitution,
or since that time, by virtue of an Act of the Congress
of the United States.”

The thing we must not lose sight of is the meaning at the time of the signing of the Constitution. That is what is important.

Acts have been passed to address children born to citizens abroad that give those children the “same rights” as a natural born citizen, but those rights are assigned through a legal statue, they are not naturally occurring. Again,

“citizens of the United States are, with the exceptions
before mentioned, such only as are either born or made
so, born within the limits and under the jurisdiction of
the United States, or naturalized by the authority of
law,”


266 posted on 03/09/2013 10:13:27 AM PST by Ladysforest
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