[fireman15]

It is fairly obvious to anyone with even the slightest historical perspective why the term “natural born citizen” was included as a requirement for a person to be eligible to be president. It was to prevent a person with divided loyalties from being president. There are other examples besides Vattel’s writing that demonstrate that the meaning the framers had in mind was a person born in the country to parents (plural) who were citizens of the United States. Simple common sense also would lead one to the same conclusion. Do you actually think that the framers would have approved of someone who was born with dual citizenship, someone whose father impregnated an underage girl and never became or had any intention of becoming a citizen, someone who lived abroad in a foreign culture during his formative years should be allowed to be president? Do you have any common sense at all? You are either have not looked into this very closely or are deluding yourself if you continue to believe otherwise.

That said... Whether an activist court will eventually rule against this meaning is hard to say. It certainly wouldn't surprise me.

[Ramius]

There’s no need to be insulting, here. I’m not your enemy, honest.

I know precisely why the framers included that part in the Constitution. They were aware that the British crown could otherwise send some noblemen over, to become citizens for the purpose of running for President and effectively undoing the revolution.

To this end, at the time they drew the line at persons either born in the new “United States” OR— and this is important— persons who were already citizens when the Constitution was ratified. What does this mean? It means that a former British subject who became a (naturalized) U.S. citizen (a much simpler task back then, btw) by the time of the Constitution (conceivably even after the revolution)... THAT person was “grandfathered in” and could run for President.

So to part of your question, did they contemplate that somebody could grow up during their formative years as a british subject and still become President? Yes... they did.

I’m merely going by the interpretation that as far as I can tell... has historically been used by courts at all levels. There are only two ways to become a citizen, therefore only two “kinds” of citizen. You’re either born into it, or you become naturalized into it later. Nowadays though, the naturalized citizens that were once eligible are long gone. So now, the only people eligible are those who are born to citizenship: natural born citizens. The word “natural” doesn’t mean anything about the parents. It refers to the “born” into citizenship status of the child.

I’ve following all these threads for years now, and they’ve become an echo-chamber of bad ideas that get traction only within these threads, because there’s nobody that cares to argue the points anymore. It’s gotten, well... boring. Every now and then I’ll poke my head in and make a comment, hoping for some new evidence, but there never is any. LIke now.