“If mere birth was the case, then why the need for the grandfather clause and why the distinction between citizen & NBC?”
You know why the grandfather clause was necessary. Because there was no U.S. until the Constitution was ratified in 1789. Hence, no one born before 1789 was born a U.S. citizen. Without some special dispensation, no one on earth or elsewhere could’ve been president before 1824.
The distinction between citizen and NBC derives from the fact that there is such a thing as naturalization.
Exactly. It’s amazing how much sophistry is spun about the grandfather clause when its reason for being is self-evident.
Wow, imagine that, another ignorant response. From the Declaration of Independence:
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.