A teacher. From Greece. Who was studying the Constitution.
Was he studying legal analysis? There has never been a requirement that both parents must be citizens. Never. Vattel noted that where the parents were of dual citizenship, the Citizenship of the Father was controlling, so your Greek teacher-student was wrong on the original intent front and you are perpetuating his error. The 14th Amendment effectively defines natural born citizenship in a manner different from Vattel in that it defines as a citizen any child born on American soil as a citizen at birth provided that the child is a subject of the United States. IOW the parents have submitted themselves to the jurisdiction of the United States. Dicta from the Supreme Court indicates that an inention to establish permanent residency is sufficient.
Believe what you want, but it is clear that in the case of Marco Rubio he is a natural born citizen of the United States. He was not born with dual citizenship because his parents were not subjects of any country other than the United States. There is not a court in this country who would rule otherwise.
That is the crux of the issue. Had Rubio's parents established themselves as subject to the US with behavior indicating that was their intent? [Intent is also the best interpretation of the original 1790(92?) law on citizenship.]
The answer is yes.
1. His father fled Cuba in 1960 and accepted asylum in the US. That is, he made himself subject to the new land on which he landed after his flight from communism.
2. Both mother and father worked a variety of jobs in a few different states and subjected themselves to all the laws and requirements of those states.
3. His mother actually sought and received citizenship under the law in effect in the 60's, clearly indicating irrefutable citizenship.
4. His father had appeared before the authorities in pursuit of his own citizenship, thereby establishing being subject to the US. (This would have met the original law of the Founders, 1790(92), and must be acceptable to those who argue the intent of the Founders.)
5. Rubio was born AFTER all this was accomplished by his parents, a decade after their arrival in the US.
And, P-Marlowe's point about the 14th amendment CANNOT be ignored. The Original Constitution provided for making amendments. The Original Constitution said that those amendments would BE the Constitution as much as the original.
One cannot separate the 14th amendment from the original intent of the founders.
It says that for citizenship all that must be established is that the parents are not subject to a foreign country, and are subject to this country.
That applies to Marco Rubio. It does not apply to Jindal (whose parents were on student visas from India), and it does not apply to Obama (whose father remained a Kenyan til his death).
The Supreme Court has been pretty clear about what under the jurisdiction means.
For example, in ELK V. WILKINS, 112 U. S. 94 (1884):
“The distinction between citizenship by birth and citizenship by naturalization is clearly marked in the provisions of the Constitution, by which
“No person, except a natural born citizen or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of this Constitution shall be eligible to the office of President,”
and “The Congress shall have power to establish an uniform rule of naturalization.” Constitution, Article II, Section 1; Article I, Section 8. By the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution, slavery was prohibited. The main object of the opening sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment was to settle the question, upon which there had been a difference of opinion throughout the country and in this Court, as to the citizenship of free negroes (Scott v. Sandford, 19 How. 393), and to put it beyond doubt that all persons, white or black, and whether formerly slaves or not, born or naturalized in the United States, and owing no allegiance to any alien power, should be citizens of the United States and of the state in which they reside. Slaughterhouse Cases, 16 Wall. 36, 83 U. S. 73; Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U. S. 303, 100 U. S. 306.
This section contemplates two sources of citizenship, and two sources only: birth and naturalization. The persons declared to be citizens are “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” The evident meaning of these last words is not merely subject in some respect or degree to the jurisdiction of the United States, but completely subject to their political jurisdiction and owing them direct and immediate allegiance. And the words relate to the time of birth in the one case, as they do to the time of naturalization in the other. Persons not thus subject to the jurisdiction of the United States at the time of birth cannot become so afterwards except by being naturalized, either individually, as by proceedings under the naturalization acts, or collectively, as by the force of a treaty by which foreign territory is acquired.”
http://supreme.justia.com/us/112/94/case.html
It uses the NBC clause and the naturalization clause to say there are only two categories of citizens - those born (from the NBC clause) and those naturalized. And someone “not thus subject to the jurisdiction of the United States at the time of birth cannot become so afterwards except by being naturalized”...
So, either Marco Rubio was born under the jurisdiction of the US, OR he needs to be naturalized to be a citizen. Period. And the basis for that was the NBC clause combined with the naturalization section.
The case went on to say:
“Indians born within the territorial limits of the United States, members of and owing immediate allegiance to one of the Indiana tribes (an alien though dependent power), although in a geographical sense born in the United States, are no more “born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” within the meaning of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment, than the children of subjects of any foreign government born within the domain of that government, or the children born within the United States of ambassadors or other public ministers of foreign nations. ...”
That provides the exceptions for free people born within the bounds of the USA.
WKA goes on at length, and uses English common law:
“It thus clearly appears that, by the law of England for the last three centuries, beginning before the settlement of this country and continuing to the present day, aliens, while residing in the dominions possessed by the Crown of England, were within the allegiance, the obedience, the faith or loyalty, the protection, the power, the jurisdiction of the English Sovereign, and therefore every child born in England of alien parents was a natural-born subject unless the child of an ambassador or other diplomatic agent of a foreign State or of an alien enemy in hostile occupation of the place where the child was born.”
And:
Again, in [Lessee of Levy v. McCartee, 31 U.S. 6 Pet. 102 102 (1832)], which concerned a descent cast since the American Revolution, in the State of New York, ...this court, speaking by Mr. Justice Story, held that the case must rest for its decision exclusively upon the principles of the common law, and treated it as unquestionable that, by that law, a child born in England of alien parents was a natural-born subject, quoting the statement of Lord Coke ... and saying that such a child “was a native-born subject, according to the principles of the common law stated by this court in McCreery v. Somervlle, 9 Wheat. 354.”
Notice again the equivalence between natural born and native born - used interchangeably.
From KWOCK JAN FAT V. WHITE, 253 U. S. 454 (1920):
“”It is not disputed that if petitioner is the son of Kwock Tuck Lee [Chinese] and his wife, Tom Ying Shee [also Chinese], he was born to them when they were permanently domiciled in the United States, is a citizen thereof, and is entitled to admission to the country. United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649. But, while it is conceded that he is certainly the same person who, upon full investigation, was found, in March, 1915, by the then Commissioner of Immigration, to be a natural born American citizen, the claim is that that Commissioner was deceived, and that petitioner is really Lew Suey Chong, who was admitted to this country in 1909 as a son of a Chinese merchant, Lew Wing Tong, of Oakland, California.”
In SCHNEIDER V. RUSK, 377 U. S. 163 (1964):
“”We start from the premise that the rights of citizenship of the native born and of the naturalized person are of the same dignity, and are coextensive. The only difference drawn by the Constitution is that only the “natural born” citizen is eligible to be President. Art. II, § 1.”
Again, there are two categories: naturalized, and either native born or natural born - the terms again are used as synonyms.
If Rubio is not a natural born citizen, then he is not a citizen at all, unless someone can find when he was naturalized. And if he was not born in the jurisdiction of the USA, then he is not a citizen at all unless naturalized.