That's just it though. If Tucker was talking only about the 'relations between nations' he would not have mentioned the 10th Amendment as its operation is an internal one, and to my knowledge, unique to our nation.
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They are natural-born subjects whether their parents were aliens or not.
True. People in England were called natural born subjects no matter which type they were, because the King owned them both.
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I said it was too bad that rather than explicitly saying the president had to have two citizen parents if that's what they wanted,
Okay, but what about the fact that by choosing the citizenship of ONE parent, you deny the very existence of the other? No one has just ONE parent. I don't see why it would have occurred to them to rob a child of his/her foreign inheritances just because one parent was American.
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the Founders used an expression that sounded an awful lot like a term they would have known, one that explicitly did not have a jus soli requirement.
Well, yeah. Why would they have used a term other than one they were familiar with.
English law and American law may be similar, but it doesn't make them the same.
This is WHY Tucker is so important.
He annotated Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England to show exactly HOW they operated in our new country. It's a very interesting read.
The common law has affixed such distinct and appropriate ideas to the terms denization, and naturalization, that they can not be confounded together, or mistaken for each other in any legal transaction whatever. They are so absolutely distinct in their natures, that in England the rights they convey, can not both be given by the same power; the king can make denizens, by his grant, or letters patent, but nothing but an act of parliament can make a naturalized subject.
This was the legal state of this subject in Virginia, when the federal constitution was adopted; it declares that congress shall have power to establish an uniform rule of naturalization; throughout the United States; but it also further declares, that the powers not delegated by the constitution to the U. States, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states, respectively or to the people. The power of naturalization, and not that of denization, being delegated to congress, and the power of denization not being prohibited to the states by the constitution, that power ought not to be considered as given to congress, but, on the contrary, as being reserved to the states.
St. George Tucker
The States have the authority over denizens , so if there is a jus soli authority in America, it belongs to the States.
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With full knowledge that someone could be a "natural-born subject" even if they had alien parents, they chose the term "natural-born citizen." That just seems like a really unfortunate choice, if they meant what you say they meant.
It because they knew the authority of naturalization lay within the federal government, but he authority of citizenship did not. Why would they have gone into detail about which the government had no authority over?
That's WHY, IMHO, they used such a concrete term - natural-born citizen....because a Natural Law concept doesn't change.
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Yes, but I'm not sure what your point is. He's saying "Les naturels, also called indigenes..."
The point was that, no matter the word,or even the language - its really only a single concept. Native, natural born, indigenous. Some one who is part of where they're born the moment they're born. That's my interpretation of it anyway.
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What made you start paying attention to it that long ago?
Was lied to
by a politician
again.
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LOL! It was just the whole disjointed concept that the Founders pledged their Lives, Fortunes and Sacred Honor so the federal government could somehow legitimately steal from the very People who's rights it was made to protect.
It just didn't make sense!
Actually, he's talking about our nation as a federation of states, so he really is talking about the relation between nations. Anyway, like I said, if you want to give more weight to Tucker's quoting of Vattel on how nations get formed than to a direct quote from Vattel on what the law of nations covers, that's up to you. Seems like a reach to me.
Okay, but what about the fact that by choosing the citizenship of ONE parent, you deny the very existence of the other? No one has just ONE parent. I don't see why it would have occurred to them to rob a child of his/her foreign inheritances just because one parent was American.
I'm not sure what you're getting at here.
Why would they have used a term other than one they were familiar with.
Because it's misleading! Because it implies that parentage isn't important, whereas according to you it's all-important! We agree that they were smart men who knew what they were about, yet you argue that they used language with a familiar meaning that was directly the opposite of what they meant. I just don't think they would have been that clumsy or shortsighted.
Thanks for the reference to Tucker's commentary. But I see that he's discussing denization and naturalization as two options for how to handle "alien friends," as distinct from natural-born citizens. And, in fact, regarding the latter, he says something that I think is damaging to your case:
Prior to the adoption of the constitution, the people inhabiting the different states might be divided into two classes: natural born citizens, or those born within the state, and aliens, or such as were born out of it.Another refining "or," saying that "natural-born citizens" and "those born within the state" are a single concept.