Sorry, but the letters and writings of those who penned our constitution say differently. The office of president is the ONLY one in the Constitution where the Framers applied the NBC standard. They set the bar that high for very good reasons.
History and current events bear this out, starkly, and painfully.
Actually for the founders it had nothing to do with birthplace. It had to do with parentage. The first Congress passed a law in 1790 to ensure that American citizens having babies overseas would have their babies be born a U.S. citizen. The founders did leave it up to us to decide if it’s one parent or both being U.S. citizens or what age constitutes conferring citzenship on the baby. These are things that laws and statutes have filled out.
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I struggle with the verbiage from the original act meaning that ‘only’ jus sanguinis was used. As I posted earlier, I view that this passage implies jus sanguinis as certainly stronger than jus soli. And that is very bad news for current holder of the office of President.
The passage says ‘shall be considered as natural born Citizens’. If the intent was to only rely purely on jus sanguinis then the passage should simply read ‘are natural born Citizens’. However, it does not. It clearly uses a comparative statement and not a equivocating one. It implies the following thought process:
‘we know they are not nbCs, but we are (by positive law) declaring them as nbCs.’
And this is why this is in a naturalization act. This is somewhat of a naturalization process.
They did use the precise phrase as in Article II. They certainly understood what they were addressing.
Of course they eliminated the entire phrase in later versions of the act.
Just some thoughts.