When the natural born citizen and 0bola research threads were active, people posted with similar situations - and the clear conclusion, plus from State Dept. info, that children born overseas to mil parents, even on base, were not natural born citizens. Citizens, yes. Natural born, no. In civics classes in high schools, a few decades ago, taught the meaning of NBC - born to two citizen parents, on US soil.
Currently, Title 8 of the U.S. Code fills in the gaps left by the Constitution. Section 1401 defines the following as people who are “citizens of the United States at birth:”
Anyone born inside the United States *
Any Indian or Eskimo born in the United States, provided being a citizen of the U.S. does not impair the person’s status as a citizen of the tribe
Any one born outside the United States, both of whose parents are citizens of the U.S., as long as one parent has lived in the U.S.
Any one born outside the United States, if one parent is a citizen and lived in the U.S. for at least one year and the other parent is a U.S. national
Any one born in a U.S. possession, if one parent is a citizen and lived in the U.S. for at least one year
Any one found in the U.S. under the age of five, whose parentage cannot be determined, as long as proof of non-citizenship is not provided by age 21
Any one born outside the United States, if one parent is an alien and as long as the other parent is a citizen of the U.S. who lived in the U.S. for at least five years (with military and diplomatic service included in this time)
A final, historical condition: a person born before 5/24/1934 of an alien father and a U.S. citizen mother who has lived in the U.S.
* There is an exception in the law — the person must be “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. This would exempt the child of a diplomat, for example, from this provision.
Anyone falling into these categories is considered natural-born, and is eligible to run for President or Vice President.
These provisions allow the children of military families to be considered natural-born, for example.
Thank you.
How ever the research I did, with a LAW LIBRARIAN who had been the law librarian for the US Supreme Court came to exactly the opposite conclusion, which is how John McCain was able to run for President, having been born in the Panama Canal Zone (but not on a military base) but to military parents on the business FOR the NATION'S INTEREST and AT THE NATION'S ORDERS. The children born in such situations could not be penalized because their parents had served their nation, just as diplomats' children were not so singled out for second class citizenship.
The case cited above in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals had other complicating considerations and involved deporting a third strike felon who had entered the US on a foreign passport who was asserting US citizenship based on the fact he'd been born to an unmarried Kenyan girlfriend of a US soldier in German US military base. . . and that base was US territory, ergo US soil. He was not arguing at all that he was receiving US citizenship via parentage due to being sired by the soldier as that was not being presented as evidence in the case. We found that McCain, and other soldiers benefited under the test of Natural Born Citizen and its concomitant ALLEGIANCE had been rule which extended from off-shore diplomats and by concatenation to soldiers on foreign duty ORDERED at the behest of their Commander in Chief to an extra-territorial posts. It does NOT, as far as we could determine, apply to average citizens residing abroad or to soldiers traveling abroad for personal reasons.
The diplomatic exemption made no requirement that spouses of diplomats had to give birth in the embassies, which were virtual American Soil, so it stands to reason the same birth location allowances would apply to soldiers and/or their spouses. However to nail that down, the US Senate passed a resolution clarifying the matter when Senator John McClain was running for President as he'd been born in Panama itself, not in the Panama Canal Zone, much less the Military Base there because the Military Hospital there was overcrowded and was not really set up for obstetrics.
As much as I liked Senator Ted Cruz as a potential candidate for President, he had an overwhelming disability to do so; he was not a Natural Born Citizen for two reasons. First, he'd been born in Canada while his parents were living there for three years for business purposes. Secondly, being born in Canada, he was granted Canadian citizenship and as such he was born holding dual citizenship, which he retained throughout much of his life, creating a dual natural allegiance obligation. I held that cruz was ineligible to run for President. As much as I liked his political positions, I would have challenged his Constitutional eligibility to stand for the office. . . and did.