I was taught in school that it meant 2 citizen parents and born on US soil. Note: the citizen parents did not have to be born on US soil.
Even the Congress in 1790, had disagreements as to what a NBC was, so I don’t know that I would say we’ve forgotten. My opinion is that if the Constitution had defined the term, there would be no issue with what it meant.
If you look at the early Congress and how they defined citizenship—it hinged largely on the father-so had the constitution defined the term, it may not have even included both parents, as long as the Father was a citizen, and the child was born on US soil.
There’s been too many arguments over what it means for more than a couple of centuries. Best to clarify it and define it once and for all. JMHO. YMMV.
Any way that’s an old worn out argument, and we have a lot of more interesting things to occupy our brains about today, so why don’t we stop the slide and get back to current events?
> Best to clarify it and define it once and for all.
That’s exactly my point. It needs to be defined and clarified.
-SB
It may be very relevant as soon as 0bola gets indicted.
“If you look at the early Congress and how they defined citizenship—it hinged largely on the father-so had the constitution defined the term, it may not have even included both parents, as long as the Father was a citizen, and the child was born on US soil.”
After the founding and up until the Cable Act in 1922, women assumed the citizenship of their husbands upon marriage. So, technically and practically, children born in the US would be Natural Born Citizens, because both their parents were Americans. (I could go with the Father-citizen interpretation based on this, as a minimum.)
After the Cable Act, women had their own citizenship. In marriages where one of the parents was an alien (not naturalized), the child would have been born with dual citizenship - dual allegiance, i.e., NOT Natural Born.
What Congress can give by passing a law, Congress can take away by passing another law. Congress doesn’t “give” natural born citizenship. A natural born citizen can’t be anything else. Only God can take that away. Any other combination of parents or location are up for grabs (in the hands of Congress)
But, if the Constitution is a “living, breathing” document, words don’t mean anything anyway.