“A person born a dual citizen (specifically for the issue of our modern times, being born after the Constitution was signed) is not eligible because such a class of citizenship did not exist in 1787 per US law or English common law.”
Try to come back to reality. They could not have banned what they could not conceive of existing. If the writers of the Constitution could not have imagined dual citizenship, they could not have banned it in a President.
And they did not. There is no mention of dual citizenship in the US Constitution, so it therefor cannot ban a dual citizen from office.
Consider the case of Lynch v. Clarke. Julia Lynch was born in New York while her parents visited America, and she left at around the age of 3 months and never returned to the U.S. The highest court in NY determined that she was a natural born citizen, eligible to run for President (if she returned long enough to satisfy the 14 year residency requirement):
“Suppose a person should be elected president who was native born, but of alien parents; could there be any reasonable doubt that he was eligible under the Constitution? I think not. The position would be decisive in his favor, that by the rule of the common law, in force when the Constitution was adopted, he is a citizen...Upon principle, therefore, I can entertain no doubt, but that by the law of the United States, every person born within the dominions and allegiance of the United States, whatever the situation of his parents, is a natural born citizen.”
That opinion was often quoted in the years to come, and Lynch was mentioned with approval in WKA.
There is no doubt that Julia Lynch was a dual citizen, and primarily a citizen (or subject) of England. But she was also a natural born citizen of the USA, and her case was never overturned or rejected by any subsequent court. That is, at a minimum, a pretty good sign that in 1844, dual citizenship was not barred by the NBC clause.
Nor could the judge in Lynch find any example otherwise during the years between 1787 and 1844.
The legal meaning of NBC included within it the possibility of a dual citizen, since some countries claim citizenship based on parentage. Had the Framers wanted something else, they could easily have written “born of citizen parents” (4 words) instead of “a natural born citizen” (4 words).
But they wrote what they wrote. You don’t have the right to overturn them.
But Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada and most likely has a Canadian birth certificate. Do you mean to tell me that a man born in Canada that has a Canadian birth certificate is a Constitutional Article 2 Section 1 natural born Citizen eligible to run for the presidency?
But they wrote what they wrote. You don’t have the right to overturn them.
These Founding Fathers are people who read international works, and many of them traveled internationally. They knew people who came here not just from England but from other countries as well.
I don't think it escaped them that it was possible for a citizen born in one country to have "dual citizenship at birth" in another country. I don't think they were that FREAKING STUPID.
And yet, that seems to be ladysforest's argument. That the Framers of the Constitution were so STUPID that they couldn't even conceive of dual citizenship existing in fact, when they wrote the Constitution.
I guess they must have gotten smarter in a hurry, since 3 of our first 4 Presidents were dual citizens while serving in that office.