Yes I believe Herb Titus. He is a authoritative figure on the subject of the true meaning of what a natural born Citizen is. He has the credentials to prove it.
A common misunderstanding of “natural born” citizenship comes from the Fourteenth Amendment, but a strict reading of the fourteenth amendment is quite clear that this only conveys an at birth naturalized citizenship. Those born in the United States at the time of adoption and afterwards were only citizens. Those who wrote the amendment knew exactly what they were doing. Because of the distinctive use of “natural born citizen” and “citizen,” in Article II, Section 1 the simple fact that being born in the United States does not make one a “natural born citizen,” it only makes one “a citizen.”
The Fourteenth amendment states in Section 1,
Section 1 - “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Obviously missing is the conveyance of “natural born” status to these citizens. In fact what is obviously included in the text is the term “naturalized.” This section has several clauses, the first deals with citizenship.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.
The second deals with prohibiting the states from passing laws denying the protection of citizenship from any citizen, “natural born” or naturalized.
No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
The fifth section details something very important, it reads
Section 5 – “The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”
Article 1, Section 8 enumerated the powers Congress has. The only power Congress has over citizenship is found here. It reads,
“To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;”
To make the freed slaves citizens, naturalization was the only power the 14th Amendment granted Congress to use. Look it up in the Constitution. Congress had no intention and no authority to making everyone born under the 14th Amendment “a natural born citizen.” This is born out by Congressional records regarding the debate of the Fourteenth Amendment. By the chief architect of Section 1 of this amendment.
“I find no fault with the introductory clause, which is simply declaratory of what is written in the Constitution, that every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen; but, sir, I may be allowed to say further, that I deny that the Congress of the United States ever had the power or color of power to say that any man born within the jurisdiction of the United States, and not owing a foreign allegiance, is not and shall not be a citizen of the United States.” John A. Bingham, (R-Ohio) US Congressman, Architect of Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, March 9, 1866 Cong. Globe, 39th, 1st Sess., 1291 (1866), Sec. 1992 of U.S. Revised Statutes (1866), Cf. U.S. Const. XIVth Amend.
There is no doubt that anyone born under the 14th Amendment who is not subject is a “naturalized citizen,” or just “a citizen,” as the Amendment states. They are not natural born citizens.
To further understand why this is so, is to look at the first clause carefully.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.
The words “born or naturalized” are joined with the conjunction “or,” and logically an or implies either of the two are equal. What they are equal in is being a citizen. Not “a natural born citizen.” This expressly negates the idea that simple birth of a person who is “subject to the jurisdiction” confers the coveted “natural born” status. If the term “citizen” did in fact convey a “natural born” status, then who were naturalized would be considered “natural born.”
Obviously, this is not the case, as it would mean that people like Kissinger, Albright and Schwarzenegger could run for office. Clearly, the Fourteenth Amendment is not conferring “natural born” status on anyone, it only confers simple citizenship and the universal rights given to all citizens, “native born” and naturalized. In fact, several Supreme Court Cases since the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment restrict citizenship claims based on being born geographically within the United States, and bestows the coveted “natural born citizen” title to the children of citizens, while affirming simple citizenship to the children born to aliens.
1. The Slaughterhouse Cases 83 U.S. 36 (1873) The Fourteenth Amendment excludes the children of aliens. “The phrase, “subject to its jurisdiction” was intended to exclude from its operation children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States.”
2. Minor v. Happersett 88 U.S. 162 (1874) The Fourteenth Amendment draws a distinction between the children of aliens and children of citizens. “The Constitution does not in words say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also.”
3. Elk v. Wilkins 112 U.S. 94 (1884) The phrase “subject to the jurisdiction” requires “direct and immediate allegiance” to the United States, not just physical presence. “This section contemplates two sources of citizenship, and two sources only: birth and naturalization. The persons declared to be citizens are “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” The evident meaning of these last words is not merely subject in some respect or degree to the jurisdiction of the United States, but completely subject to their political jurisdiction and owing them direct and immediate allegiance. And the words relate to the time of birth in the one case, as they do to the time of naturalization in the other. Persons not thus subject to the jurisdiction of the United States at the time of birth cannot become so afterwards except by being naturalized, either individually, as by proceedings under the naturalization acts, or collectively, as by the force of a treaty by which foreign territory is acquired.”
4. Wong Kim Ark Case, 169 U.S. 649 (1898) Affirms that “natural born citizen,” is the child of an existing citizen. “The right of citizenship never descends in the legal sense, either by the common law or under the common naturalization acts. It is incident to birth in the country, or it is given personally by statute. The child of an alien, if born in the country, is as much a citizen as the natural born child of a citizen, and by operation of the same principle.”
5. Perkins v. Elg, 307 U. S. 325 (1939) In citing a long series of cases, involving minors removed from their US domicile by their foreign born parents, the Supreme Court distinguishes the difference of “a native born person” of two naturalized citizens can become President. This distinction of citizenship is not made to the others, only that their Jus soli citizenship is intact if at the age of majority they reclaim it.
As you can see from the intent of the Founding Fathers to the Supreme Court decision that “a natural born” is the child of citizens. A natural born citizen is not the child of an alien. In this there is no doubt. The question now that we seek answered is that Barack Hussein Obama, II is both the child of an alien who never had any intention on becoming a naturalized citizen and the child of a citizen minor. If Barack Hussein Obama, II was in fact born in Hawaii, he is a citizen under Jus soli and afforded all rights any citizen has. But he is not a citizen under Jus sanguinis, because we have laws that dictate how Jus sanguinis citizenship can be transferred. If Barack Hussein Obama, II cannot claim citizenship under Jus sanguinis then he is not a natural born citizen.
While many patriots will argue with clear conviction “natural born” should be narrowly interpreted as to mean both parents must be citizens, giving birth to that child under the jurisdiction of the United States of America, they do accept that Jus sanguinis citizenship can be passed from one parent in accordance to the law of the land at the time of birth. So what was the law of the land at the time for giving a person Jus sanguinis citizenship?
There three ways for a person claim citizenship, what most of us think of first is called Jus soli, “the right of the soil,” which is the physical location your place of birth. The second is what is called Jus sanguinis, “the right of blood,” which you inherit from your parents. The third is a combination of Jus soli and Jus sanguinis, and it is this combination that determines if one is a natural born citizen. Since any citizenship under Jus solis is codified by the Fourteenth Amendment, we only find laws for passing citizenship via Jus sanguinis on August 4th, 1961 in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (McCarran-Walter Act). This act states that in order for Obama’s right of blood citizenship to be passed to him, that since he only had one parent who was a U.S. citizen at the time of your birth, that parent must have resided in the United States for at least ten years, at least five of which had to be after the age of 14. Barack Hussein Obama, II fails the test for the right to claim “natural born citizen” status.
Common sense tells us that both Jus soli and Jus sanguinis are what the Founding Fathers intended when they penned the phrase “a natural born citizen.” For imagine foreigners owing allegiance to a foreign power, arriving in America, giving birth to a child and immediately returning home to their country with their child. This child is reared for 21 years in a culture that hates America and that wants to see America destroyed. On the child’s 21st birthday this child returns to the United States of America, claiming their citizenship based Jus soli. For fourteen years they live in the United States, supported covertly by these foreign powers, growing in wealth and stature until they reach the age of 35 years. This scenario cumulates with this child of the soil, not having one drop of American blood in their veins, becoming President and destroying this country. Considering that countries are a creation of mankind, and non-existent in nature, natural loyalties are too blood.
“To disregard such a deliberate choice of words and their natural meaning would be a departure from the first principle of constitutional interpretation. ‘In expounding the Constitution of the United States, every word must have its due force, and appropriate meaning; for it is evident from the whole instrument, that no word was unnecessarily used, or needlessly added. The many discussions which have taken place upon the construction of the constitution, have proved the correctness of this proposition; and shown the high talent, the caution, and the foresight of the illustrious men who framed it. Every word appears to have been weighed with the utmost deliberation, and its force and effect to have been fully understood.” Chief Justice Roger B. Taney
The Constitution directly specified 3 types of citizens, at the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment as those who are “citizens,” those who were citizens at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, and natural born citizens. The architects of the Fourteenth Amendment had two to choose from in granting citizenship under this amendment, they choose just a citizen, and rejected “a natural born citizen.”
Whatever you might imagine common sense tells us, that is not what OUR FOUNDERS AND EARLY LEADERS told us.
As soon as they POSSIBLY could, in the course of the very FIRST Congress, which was participated in by JAMES MADISON, THE "FATHER" OF OUR CONSTITUTION, those leaders clarified that children born to US citizens abroad were to be considered natural born citizens as well.
So there goes the "birth on US soil PLUS two citizen parents" theory right out the window.
In fact, it was entirely possible, ACCORDING TO OUR LEADERS IN THE FIRST CONGRESS, WHO INCLUDED THE "FATHER" OF OUR CONSTITUTION, for a person to be born in England to American citizen parents, live his entire life there to age 21, be raised and educated there, and THEN to come to the United States of America as the NATURAL BORN AMERICAN CITIZEN that he was, spend 14 years here, and be elected President at age 35.
You can dispute what you think the Founders and Framers "intended," but you can't dispute the words of the laws and Constitutional provisions that they passed.
Nor can you dispute that in early America, every single known source except for David Ramsay, who was a legally-illiterate historian and medical doctor making a self-interested sore-loser claim, completely omits ANY indication that citizen parents were every any kind of requirement for persons born US citizens on American soil.
Nor can you dispute the fact that William Rawle, a LEGAL EXPERT who wrote an authoritative guide to the Constitution of the United States, who regularly met and personally discussed political and legal issues with an entire group of Founders and Framers including both George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, and who was present IN PHILADELPHIA while our Constitutional Convention was being held there, had THIS to say:
It cannot escape notice, that no definition of the nature and rights of citizens appears in the Constitution. The descriptive term is used, with a plain indication that its meaning is understood by all, and this indeed is the general character of the whole instrument. Except in one instance, it gives no definitions, but it acts in all its parts, on qualities and relations supposed to be already known. Thus it declares, that no person, except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of president--that no person shall be a senator who shall not have been nine years a citizen of the United States, nor a representative who has not been such a citizen seven years, and it will therefore be not inconsistent with the scope and tendency of the present essay, to enter shortly into the nature of citizenship.
In a republic the sovereignty resides essentially, and entirely in the people. Those only who compose the people, and partake of this sovereignty are citizens, they alone can elect, and are capable of being elected to public offices, and of course they alone can exercise authority within the community: they possess an unqualified right to the enjoyment of property and personal immunity, they are bound to adhere to it in peace, to defend it in war, and to postpone the interests of all other countries to the affection which they ought to bear for their own.
The citizens of each state constituted the citizens of the United States when the Constitution was adopted. The rights which appertained to them as citizens of those respective commonwealths, accompanied them in the formation of the great, compound commonwealth which ensued. They became citizens of the latter, without ceasing to be citizens of the former, and he who was subsequently born a citizen of a state, became at the moment of his birth a citizen of the United States. Therefore every person born within the United States, its territories or districts, whether the parents are citizens or aliens, is a natural born citizen in the sense of the Constitution, and entitled to all the rights and privileges appertaining to that capacity. It is an error to suppose, as some (and even so great a mind as Locke) have done, that a child is born a citizen of no country and subject of no government, and that he so continues till the age of discretion, when he is at liberty to put himself under what government he pleases. How far the adult possesses this power will hereafter be considered, but surely it would be unjust both to the state and to the infant, to withhold the quality of the citizen until those years of discretion were attained. Under our Constitution the question is settled by its express language, and when we are informed that, excepting those who were citizens, (however the capacity was acquired,) at the time the Constitution was adopted, no person is eligible to the office of president unless he is a natural born citizen, the principle that the place of birth creates the relative quality is established as to us.