Interesting citation in Wikipedia on this subject....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Romney_presidential_campaign,_1968
From the link:
“While Romney was born in Mexico, he was still considered to be a viable and legal candidate to run for president. His Mormon grandfather and his three wives fled to Mexico in 1886, but none of them ever relinquished their citizenship. While the Constitution does provide that a president must be a natural born citizen, the first Congress of the United States in 1790 passed legislation stating: “The children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond the sea, or outside the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural-born citizens of the United States.” Romney and his family fled Mexico in 1912 prior to the Mexican revolution. However, the Naturalization Act of 1795 repealed the Act of 1790[citation needed] and removed the language explicitly stating that the children of US citizens are natural-born citizens. As such, it is inconclusive whether Romney was eligible for the office of President.”
I have contended that the 1790 act verbiage - along with the dropping of that verbiage - provide direct insight into the intent and mechanics of what defined a “natural born Citizen”. The fact that it basically elevated jus sanguinis over jus soli meant that parentage was the considered the overriding, dominant factor of being a “natural born Citizen”, jus soli was secondary - just as the act shows. But, the removal of the clause in later acts indicates Congress likely understood they altered Article II, Section 1 incorrectly. And thus, they fixed it - by dropping the verbiage. Thus showing that the intent and meaning of Article II, Section 1 was born to US citizens within the borders of the United States.
Many have incorrectly asserted that the original 1790 act ‘defined’ natural born Citizen. It did not, it declared those meeting a criteria AS ‘natural born Citizens’. It layer upon those meeting the criteria (2 US Citizen parents) to be ‘considered as’ natural born Citizens. It did not ever say they ARE natural born Citizens.
No Bluecat6, what the 1790 Naturalization act asserted exceeded the authority of the Congress, and was eliminated from US Code in the 1795 act. But it was a "Naturalization Act." There are two classes of citizen, natural, and naturalized. Like the 14th Amendment, the most it could have done was to create a naturalized "born citizen", which was called a "native born citizen of the US, as Obama declared himself to be. The 1790 act, deceptively used by Obama’s constitutional law professor, Larry Tribe, when he asserted that McCain was a natural born citizen because he was born to two citizen parents in the submission by Tribe and Ted Olson to the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings over Senate Res 511, which was signed in agreement by all senators including Obama, but excluding McCain (as it could have cause legal trouble had he prevailed over Obama).
Leo Donofrio has erased any legal doubts about whether Justice Waite's statement was dictum. The Minor case was built upon the “..., it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens.” statement, previously common law understood by our framers, as were almost all terms used in the Constitution. It was the only constitutional definition of a class of citizen before the 14th Amendment. Virginia Minor was one of the majority of citizens who were natural born citizens, thus asserting beyond doubt that she was a citizen. About the class of naturalized citizens there were many doubts, so Waite told us his decision was independent of the 14th Amendment by design, and thus uncorrupted by the doubts about who were citizens.
No law, no amendment, no supreme court decision has altered the definition made precedent by Minor v. Happersett. It is a remarkable time when states, beholden to political forces, unions, statists, will resort to altering the constitutional definition of who is eligible to be president in their official documents. It is more understandable that Obama’s fellow travelers, people who honestly, as Barack told us, want to dispense with the Constitution because it prevents them from doing what they feel the nation needs. The owners of justia.com, federal judges who are all political appointees, will lie to protect what they perceive as their political comrades. Now both New York and Indiana have shown that holding temporary power - because that is all that it will be - trumps the constitution.
As Donofrio pointed out, the Waite decision does not invalidate the remarkable history recounted on rxsid’s “home page”, leading to Ramsay, Jefferson, Franklin (many times) our first law school William and Mary, Marshall, Washington,... But having decided law eliminates the need to another interpretation. It may not be necessary, though certainly interesting, to know to whom Barack was born, or how many social security numbers he has, and with what names. Only an amendment can alter the Minor decision.
Republicans were quiet because they were just as complicit in supporting McCain, whom the Democrat Senate whitewashed with SR 511 and the Obama-McCaskill SB 2678 during the spring of 2008. They are willing crooks, and one way or another, in the famous words of Obama’s spiritual adviser for two decades, “The chickens are coming home to roost.” They should all be prosecuted, because all of them knew that Obama was born to an alien father. Obama told us. He also told that that he was born, natural born it turns out, though he didn't include that on his web site, a subject of the British Commonwealth. Would our founders and framers have writen a constitution which would sanction as president, our sovereign, the son, born to and a subject of our enemy Great Britain?