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To: arthurus

You are conflating “citizen” with “natural born citizen.” The reason for the clause in the Constitution was the desire of the Founders that anyone with allegiances other than to this country should not be eligible. Conservatives are like liberals in this. They want strict rules followed but not for their own guy. I think the law actually on the books says there needs to be at least one born citizen parent.


The 21st century term is “Citizen of the United States at Birth” and the requirements for that designation are spelled out in great detail in the US Code.
The Founding Fathers established a process to amend and change their thinking in the Constitution. The 14th Amendment altered their thinking on citizenship by establishing only two categories of American citizens: born citizens and naturalized citizens. Since the ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868, born citizens can be president and naturalized citizens cannot be president.
Here’s the current law of the land:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/8/1401.html


555 posted on 11/13/2010 6:39:28 PM PST by jamese777
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To: jamese777; arthurus
The Founding Fathers established a process to amend and change their thinking in the Constitution. The 14th Amendment altered their thinking on citizenship by establishing only two categories of American citizens: born citizens and naturalized citizens. Since the ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868, born citizens can be president and naturalized citizens cannot be president.

Sorry, but the language of the 14th Amendment doesn't nullify the language of the requirements for president. Both are still definitive law but the language of the 14th Amendment is subject to and defined in the context of Article II, Section 1. Chester A. Arthur was still very much concerned about the language of Article II, Section 1 in spite of the 14th Amendment passed about 12 years before he ran for vice president and went to great lengths to conceal his dual citizenship conferred on him at birth by his father's British citizenship.
558 posted on 11/13/2010 6:51:09 PM PST by aruanan
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To: jamese777
The Founding Fathers established a process to amend and change their thinking in the Constitution. The 14th Amendment altered their thinking on citizenship by establishing only two categories of American citizens: born citizens and naturalized citizens.

You're forgetting that the SCOTUS recognized natural born citizenship as separate from the two categories of citizenship established under the 14th amendment. NBC is extraconstitutional.

Justice Waite: "The fourteenth amendment did not affect the citizenship of women any more than it did of men. In this particular, therefore, the rights of Mrs. Minor do not depend upon the amendment. She has always been a citizen from her birth, and entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizenship. The amendment prohibited the State, of which she is a citizen, from abridging any of her privileges and immunities as a citizen of the United States; but it did not confer citizenship on her. That she had before its adoption."

Justice Gray says NBC is OUTSIDE of the Constitution: "In Minor v. Happersett, Chief Justice Waite, when construing, in behalf of the court, the very provision of the Fourteenth Amendment now in question, said: "The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that.""

Justice Gray affirms Waite's opinion that Virginia Minor's citizenship was due to jus soli and jus sanguinis, not the 14th amendment, and is, as such, a separate type of citizenship: "Minor v. Happersett (1874), 21 Wall. 162, 166-168. The decision in that case was that a woman born of citizen parents within the United States was a citizen of the United States, ..."

582 posted on 11/14/2010 12:41:49 AM PST by edge919
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