Nope. The ONLY place Natural Born Citizen is mentioned in the Constitution is in regards to President and Vice President. The 14th has to do with slaves being recognized as citizens. It was passed in 1868, right after the Civil War because up to then, Blacks were not even seen as wholly human let alone citizens. The 14th Amendment was part of the reconstruction.
In 1866, Senator Jacob Howard clearly spelled out the intent of the 14th Amendment by stating:
"Every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States. This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons. It settles the great question of citizenship and removes all doubt as to what persons are or are not citizens of the United States. This has long been a great desideratum in the jurisprudence and legislation of this country."
This understanding was reaffirmed by Senator Edward Cowan, who stated:
"[A foreigner in the United States] has a right to the protection of the laws; but he is not a citizen in the ordinary acceptance of the word..."
You can debate it all you like but you won't change history nor Obamas status.
Have a nice day.
Okay. And where does the Constitution as of 1787 define what was meant by "natural born citizen"?
The 14th has to do with slaves being recognized as citizens. It was passed in 1868, right after the Civil War because up to then, Blacks were not even seen as wholly human let alone citizens. The 14th Amendment was part of the reconstruction.
Nothing in the 14th Amendments states that its provision apply only to freed slaves. A law means what it says, not what some people meant it to say.
Moreover, under your interpretation that it only applies to slavery and freed slaves, then such freed slaves would have much greater Constitutional protections then whites. As you may recall, the 14th Amendment says the following:
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
By your logic, those protections would apply only to freed slaves. Thereore, states remain free to deprive white people of life, liberty, and property, to deny them equal protection of the laws, and to abridge their privileges and immunities as U.S. citizens. So your "it only applies to slaves" argument makes no sense to me.
In 1866, Senator Jacob Howard clearly spelled out the intent of the 14th Amendment by stating:
No, he didn't. That may have been his intent, and his opinion, but that's the most it is.
As Scalia routinely points out when discussing the role of legislative history, the public opinions and statements of legislators do not, and should not, override the plain text of an Amendment ratified by Congress as a whole, and in the case of Amendments, as approved by all those state legislatures. Because we have absolutely no idea if those self-serving statements were just his own opinion, or reflected the opinions of the body as a whole, or reflected the opinions of the state legislatures that ultimately ratified that amendment. Or whether he just made that statement because he wasn't able to get that language into the text so was trying to insert it via the back door.
But let's see what he says anyway:
"Every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States. This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons. It settles the great question of citizenship and removes all doubt as to what persons are or are not citizens of the United States. This has long been a great desideratum in the jurisprudence and legislation of this country."
I really can't believe you cited that, but thank you. First, if that's your "evidence", it completely trashes your own argument that the 14th Amendment and its citizenship provisions were intended to apply to freed slaves only. Senator Howard's sweeping statement of what it means says not a word about it only applying to freed slaves.
Second, it's an odd statement because it doesn't quite make sense. The part about being in the families of foreign ambassadors or foreign ministers is specific enough. But what is the difference between an "alien" and a "foreigner", because he mentions both? And he doesn't even say the families of "aliens" or "foreigners", as he did with the families of ambassadors and ministers. He just says that it doesn't make citizens out of "aliens" or "foreigners", which of course would include foreign ambassadors or ministers as well, so why mention them specifically at all? And that, right there, is one of your problems with using individual statements in legislative history to overcome the plain text of a law. Because they can be confusing, vague, ambiguous, and even contradictory. Not to mention we have no idea whether anyone else who voted for the Amendment as drafted agreed with this guy's interpretation.
But in any case, I don't see anything in that statement requiring that both of a person's parents also be citizens. And if it really was the intention both of Congress and the legislatures that passed that amendment to include that limitation, then why wasn't that language included in the Amendment?, rather than only being inferred via the statement of a single Senator that wasn't made part of the text?
The only language that actually appears in the Amendment that supports any consideration of parental citizenship is "subject to the jurisdiction thereof". I could see crafting an argument that someone who is born here of a person who did not have a legal right to be here arguably wouldn't be "subject to the jurisdication thereof". Same with the children of diplomats. That's one reason I don't think babies born of illegal immigrants are necessarily citizens.
But that caveat doesn't apply if the mother of a child born here is a U.S. citizen, because she is entitled to remain here with full rights as a U.S. citizen. So she and her baby would be "subject to the jurisdiction" of the laws of the U.S., and therefore the baby would be a citizen as well, at birth, under the 14th Amendment.
This understanding was reaffirmed by Senator Edward Cowan, who stated:
"[A foreigner in the United States] has a right to the protection of the laws; but he is not a citizen in the ordinary acceptance of the word..."
What?! That's a completely different point. Nobody is claiming that being a foreigner is the same as being a citizen. Cowan is simply making the point that just because you're not a citizen doesn't mean that you don't have any rights in the U.S. Which, interestingly enough, some folks might dispute in the context of the war on terror and the actions of foreign nationals on U.S. soil.
In 1866, Senator Jacob Howard clearly spelled out the intent of the 14th Amendment by stating:
"Every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States. This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons. It settles the great question of citizenship and removes all doubt as to what persons are or are not citizens of the United States. This has long been a great desideratum in the jurisprudence and legislation of this country."
- - - - -
Right. The 1872 Supreme Court understood the intent and meaning of the founders and Senator Jacob Howard of what the 14th Amendment meant about the, "subject to their jurisdiction", in the Slaughterhouse cases.
-snip-
"To remove this difficulty primarily, and to establish clear and comprehensive definition of citizenship which should declare what should constitute citizenship of the United States and also citizenship of a State, the first clause of the first section was framed.
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." The first observation we have to make on this clause is that it puts at rest both the questions which we stated to have been the subject of differences of opinion. It declares that persons may be citizens of the United States without regard to their citizenship of a particular State, and it overturns the Dred Scott decision by making all persons born within the United States and subject to its jurisdiction citizens of the United States. That its main purpose was to establish the citizenship of the negro can admit of no doubt. The phrase, "subject to its jurisdiction" was intended to exclude from its operation children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States.
The next observation is more important in view of the arguments of counsel in the present case. It is that the distinction between citizenship of the United States and citizenship of a State is clearly recognized and established.
Page 83 U. S. 74
Not only may a man be a citizen of the United States without being a citizen of a State, but an important element is necessary to convert the former into the latter. He must reside within the State to make him a citizen of it, but it is only necessary that he should be born or naturalized in the United States to be a citizen of the Union.
It is quite clear, then, that there is a citizenship of the United States, and a citizenship of a State, which are distinct from each other, and which depend upon different characteristics or circumstances in the individual."
-end snip-