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To: RC one
A natural born citizen, according to the founder's understanding, is someone born on US soil as evidenced by ...

You can stop right there. Congress gave no definition.

Original intent requires you to look into what natural born meant in British common law prior to the Constitution, which should tell you what they thought it meant when they used the term to provide some security for the fledgling country against intentional exploitation by a foreign power.

If you do that you will most certainly see that your definition is incomplete and therefor wrong.

The definition in common law does not exclude foreign born with a citizen Father. natural born is defined not as a place, but as a status that is transferrable from father to son. In some cases the old common law writings mentioned both birthright citizenship, which is a place, and conferred citizenshipwhich is a status and not dependant on place, but the status of the parent.

Constitutionally, in more modern times the exclusion of the mother would be unconstitutional due to the equal protection rights that came with constitutional status for women.

Thus Ted Cruz received his status from his mother, a natural born citizen of the US.

Original intent also forces you to conclude that this was all about national security at the time. Children of British expats in the US, born in the US would be natural born citizens if your definition was valid. So what kind of security would that be?

In addition to conferring natural born status, the parent needed to have resided in the US for 14 years prior, and needed to be of majority age. (21years)

This provided the country with enough security to nearly guarantee that a foreign power would not easily exploit the natural born citizen, a prerequisite to run for office as president of the US.

23 posted on 01/16/2016 1:50:17 AM PST by Cold Heat
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To: Cold Heat
Original intent requires you to look into what natural born meant in British common law prior to the Constitution, which should tell you what they thought it meant when they used the term to provide some security for the fledgling country against intentional exploitation by a foreign power.

Original intent? I got your original intent, right here:

Note the reference to Natural Law in the first sentence of our Declaration of Independence.

It is crystal clear that the Founding Fathers used the Natural Law definition of 'natural born Citizen' when they wrote Article II. By invoking "The Laws of Nature and Nature's God" the 56 signers of the Declaration incorporated a legal standard of freedom into the forms of government that would follow.

President John Quincy Adams, writing in 1839, looked back at the founding period and recognized the true meaning of the Declaration's reliance on the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God." He observed that the American people's "charter was the Declaration of Independence. Their rights, the natural rights of mankind. Their government, such as should be instituted by the people, under the solemn mutual pledges of perpetual union, founded on the self-evident truth's proclaimed in the Declaration."

The Constitution, Vattel, and “Natural Born Citizen”: What Our Framers Knew

The Laws of Nature and of Nature's God: The True Foundation of American Law

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”.

MINOR V. HAPPERSETT IS BINDING PRECEDENT AS TO THE CONSTITUTIONAL DEFINITION OF A NATURAL BORN CITIZEN.

Neither the 14th Amendment nor Wong Kim Ark make one a Natural Born Citizen

The Harvard Law Review Article Taken Apart Piece by Piece and Utterly Destroyed

Citizenship Terms Used in the U.S. Constitution - The 5 Terms Defined & Some Legal Reference to Same

"The citizenship of no man could be previous to the declaration of independence, and, as a natural right, belongs to none but those who have been born of citizens since the 4th of July, 1776."....David Ramsay, 1789.

A Dissertation on Manner of Acquiring Character & Privileges of Citizen of U.S.-by David Ramsay-1789

The Law of Nations or the Principles of Natural Law (1758)

The Laws of Nature and of Nature's God: The True Foundation of American Law

Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Volume 20 - Use of The Law of Nations by the Constitutional Convention

27 posted on 01/16/2016 1:58:59 AM PST by Godebert
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To: Cold Heat
You can stop right there. Congress gave no definition.

The definition can be partially discerned from article II, section I, clause 5 easily enough. this understanding was elaborated on by St. George Tucker (who passed the Virginia Bar on the verge of the Revolution). He said:

That provision in the constitution which requires that the president shall be a native-born citizen (unless he were a citizen of the United States when the constitution was adopted,) is a happy means of security against foreign influence, which, wherever it is capable of being exerted, is to he dreaded more than the plague. The admission of foreigners into our councils, consequently, cannot be too much guarded against; their total exclusion from a station to which foreign nations have been accustomed to, attach ideas of sovereign power, sacredness of character, and hereditary right, is a measure of the most consummate policy and wisdom. …The title of king, prince, emperor, or czar, without the smallest addition to his powers, would have rendered him a member of the fraternity of crowned heads: their common cause has more than once threatened the desolation of Europe. To have added a member to this sacred family in America, would have invited and perpetuated among us all the evils of Pandora’s Box.

Of Article II, section I, clause 5, Supreme Court Justice Joseph story said this 46 years after the adoption of the constitution:

A loophole for themselves was created out of respect to those distinguished revolutionary patriots, who were born in a foreign land

It doesn't get much clearer than that my friend.

31 posted on 01/16/2016 2:11:17 AM PST by RC one (race baiting and demagoguery-if you're a Democrat it's what you do.)
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To: Cold Heat
-- Congress gave no definition. --

Do you mean the constitution gave no definition? If so, I sort of agree. Does the consitution define who is a citizen of the US? Not NBC, just plain "citizen."

I think that's an easy yes/no question.

44 posted on 01/16/2016 2:43:53 AM PST by Cboldt
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