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.
-PJ
You said Rawle stated:
“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.”
Well if that is true then Ted Cruz born in Canada is NOT a natural born Citizen. Also David Ramsey was not illiterate. He also stated:
“citizenship by inheritance belongs to none but the children of those Americans, who, having survived the declaration of independence, acquired that adventitious character in their own right, and transmitted it to their offspring….” He continued that citizenship “as a natural right, belongs to none but those who have been born of citizens since the 4th of July, 1776….”
Rawle is not the only authority. I would turn to Representative John Bingham, considered the father of the 14th Amendment. He stated stated:
“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.” (Cong. Globe, 39th, 1st Sess., 1291 (1866))
Obama’’s father owed allegiance to a foreign sovereignty called the United Kingdom.
Ted Cruz’s (who was born in Canada) father owed allegiance to Cuba
Rubio’s father owed allegiance to Cuba
Jindal’s mother AND father owed allegiance to India. They weren’t naturalized U.S. citizens before he was born.
None of them are a Article 2 Section 1 Constitutional natural born Citizen. They are 14th Amendment statute citizens. A statutory citizen (bestowed by man’s pen) can never be a “natural born” citizen (bestowed by God/nature). The founding fathers were concerned about place of birth and the allegiance of your parents. In closing, the Supreme Court of the United States has never applied the term “natural born citizen” to any other category than “those born in the country of parents who are citizens thereof”.