If my wife and I traveled to Mexico while she was pregnant and gave birth in Mexico, what type of citizen would my child be. Keep in mind you don't know if my intention is to raise the child in Mexico or go back to the states. You must be definitive, as at birth the status is final and natural. You are a nurse working at the hospital filling out the birth certificate, and you choose, simply by what makes natural common sense to you. That would be the laws of nature applied to man, as the founders envisioned :
A: An American.
B: A natural born American.
C: A Mexican.
D: A natural born Mexican.
E: Both a natural born American and natural born Mexican.
F: A mexican and a natural born American.
G: A Natural born Mexican and an American.
After answering this question, answer this one:
A mexican man and wife traveled to America while she is pregnant and gives birth in America, what type of citizen would her child be. Keep in mind you dont know if her intention is to raise the child in mexico or stay in the states. You must be definitive, as at birth the status is final and natural. A simple common sense judgment. Forget the 14th amendment. :
A: An American.
B: A natural born American.
C: A Mexican.
D: A natural born Mexican.
E: Both a natural born American and natural born Mexican.
F: A Mexican and a natural born American.
G: A Natural born Mexican and an American.
Are your answers consistent between the two? Are you consistent with all your logic you have posted?
I say A for the American parents and C for the Mexican parents.
It took me no time to answer the question. None. The laws of nature are simple. It should take you no time as well.
I should add H to the mix:
H: Mexican and American.
I should add H to the mix:
H: Mexican and American.
Both parents are citizens of their home country, and deserve the respect to have their child assigned the same citizenship.
Both parents failed to deliver their child under natural conditions of their citizenships. The Child is in a foreign country, and may stay there. So neither are natural born citizens. A decision had to be made to assign their child the proper citizenship. It wasn't natural.
Each gets one single country. A citizen can not be loyal to two countries, just as a man can not be loyal to two wives. A slave has one master. Two countries can not compete for their loyalties, yet they both require singular loyalties.
Nature has a logic when applied to the condition of man. Our founders knew this. They based all their theories of government on the nature of man, accounting for both good and evil.
PA-RIVER asked me: “If my wife and I traveled to Mexico while she was pregnant and gave birth in Mexico, what type of citizen would my child be. Keep in mind you don’t know if my intention is to raise the child in Mexico or go back to the states. You must be definitive, as at birth the status is final and natural. You are a nurse working at the hospital filling out the birth certificate, and you choose, simply by what makes natural common sense to you.”
I’d recommend that, as soon as practical, you go to the nearest U.S. embassy or consulate to get a Consular Report of Birth Abroad (FS-240). As to your child’s status, the CRS report aptly describes:
“The weight of legal and historical authority indicates that the term ‘natural born’ citizen would mean a person who is entitled to U.S. citizenship ‘by birth’ or ‘at birth,’ either by being born ‘in’ the United States and under its jurisdiction, even those born to alien parents; by being born abroad to U.S. citizen-parents; or by being born in other situations meeting legal requirements for U.S. citizenship ‘at birth.’”
I am a bit baffled, PA-RIVER, as to where you got the idea that I’d know how Mexican hospitals handle birth records. If the nurses even write in a citizenship, it’s news to me.
PA-RIVER asked: “A mexican man and wife traveled to America while she is pregnant and gives birth in America, what type of citizen would her child be.”
As long they’re not diplomats exempt from our laws, the child is a natural-born citizen of the United States. I don’t know what status Mexico would grant the child.
PA-RIVER asked: “Are your answers consistent between the two? Are you consistent with all your logic you have posted?”
Yes and yes. As I’ve been explaining since before this CRS report, the second answer has been clear and settled for a long time, while the first is a more recent consensus of legal scholars, and though John S. McCain III did not win the 2008 presidential election, I think his candidacy pretty well settles the question.
See also:
Charles Gordon, “Who Can be President of the United States: The Unresolved Enigma”, 28 Md. L. Rev. 1, 7-22 (1968)
Jill Pryor, “The Natural-Born Citizen Clause and Presidential Eligibility”, 97 Yale Law Journal 881-889 (1988).