“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.
Thank you very much for the details, all coming back to me know. It’s not a moot point, unknown, or murky.
A natural born citizen can’t be anything else.
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Right, which is why I object to the concept that NBC should include dual citizenship.
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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.
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In general I agree with what you wrote. However, I don’t believe that Congress has the power to define the term—they are in charge of immigration/naturalization process which doesn’t apply to NBC.
Therefore, the definition would have to be a constitutional amendment. That may start in Congress if 2/3 agree, but then the states would have to ratify it.
In this scenario, Congress is not “giving” anything—just documenting the definition of NBC for the record—the way it is supposed to be done instead of by activist judges legislating from the bench or by defacto changing requirements by lying/ignoring reality.
Basically we are in agreement on the broad strokes.