It occurred to me yesterday that what people such as Jeff Winston advocate is the most LIBERAL possible interpretation of the meaning, while what people such as myself advocate the most CONSERVATIVE possible interpretation of the meaning.
Jeff's standard allows anchor babies, birth tourism, fails to explain why Indians and Slaves were barred from citizenship, and also fails to explain the Children of British loyalists after the Revolutionary war. (that they were British, not American. In those days you didn't get to chose your allegiance. )
The Conservative Standard contains none of those paradoxes.
Nice try. But the fact is, THERE IS NOT A SINGLE CREDIBLE CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY, CONSERVATIVE OR OTHERWISE, THAT ADHERES TO YOUR VIEW.
Neither is your view the historical one. It simply isn't.
Jeff's standard allows anchor babies, birth tourism,
That may be. But I don't think anchor babies or birth tourism were problems that the Framers of the Constitution could have foreseen in 1787, since it took weeks for people to get from one country to another.
Again, we are talking about the system the Framers of the Constitution set up. Not the one we might prefer to set up today.
...fails to explain why Indians and Slaves were barred from citizenship, and also fails to explain the Children of British loyalists after the Revolutionary war. (that they were British, not American. In those days you didn't get to chose your allegiance. )
No, it doesn't fail to explain ANY of those things.
Indians were not citizens because they were members of other nations. Indian tribes were regarded as separate nations that we had no control over, just as we had no control over the governments of England or France, and that we made treaties with, just as we made treaties with England and France.
This is pretty elementary. I'm surprised you don't know it.
Slaves were not citizens because they were legally regarded as property, not people. Again, this is pretty elementary and I'm surprised you don't know it.
As for the children of British Loyalists, we dealt with that issue as well. This had nothing to do with the birth of children to immigrants. It had to do with dividing Americans up after the Revolution into US citizens, or British.
The Supreme Court was clear that if a person was born in America before or immediately after the Revolution, he or she had the right to choose American citizenship upon reaching adulthood. If he or she was taken off to England or somewhere as a child by Loyalist parents, and waited a long time and failed to elect to come back to America, then he or she could lose that right by not making the choice as a young adult.
A minority on the Court argued that anyone born on US soil after July 4, 1776, was automatically a US citizen, even if their birth was immediately after than date, and that even in later life they were still US citizens even if they had never come back to America. They also said that NOTHING was better settled in the law than the fact that the children born in a country were citizens of that country, even if their parents were aliens.
So your claim that the COMPLETELY HISTORICAL AND ACCEPTED UNDERSTANDING of natural born citizen fails to account for these various groups of people is simply and completely false. Just like your claim that it ever took two citizen parents for a person to be a natural born citizen.
His definition is also exactly what the Democrats want—and the GOPe are thus eager to provide: both a defilement of the Constitution and an opening for antiAmerican presidents in one fell swoop.