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To: Citizen Blade
The 1790 law dealt with citizens born overseas. It imposed no requirement that someone born in the US needed to be born to two citizens to be considered natural-born.

The re-written law does not mention the term natural-born. However, that does not mean the US has three categories of citizen- US law only recognizes two categories of citizen: naturalized (who do not qualify to be President) and citizen from birth (who do).


The idea that one must be born in the country and to parents who are both citizens of that country to be a natural born citizen of that country was common knowledge amongst those who wrote the Constitution. From The Law of Nature and of Nations, Samuel Pufendorf (1674, tr. Basil Kennett 1703) which John Adams thought to be authoritative:

§ 212. Citizens and natives.

The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens. As the society cannot exist and perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights. The society is supposed to desire this, in consequence of what it owes to its own preservation; and it is presumed, as matter of course, that each citizen, on entering into society, reserves to his children the right of becoming members of it. The country of the fathers is therefore that of the children; and these become true citizens merely by their tacit consent. We shall soon see whether, on their coming to the years of discretion, they may renounce their right, and what they owe to the society in which they were born. I say, that, in order to be of the country, it is necessary that a person be born of a father who is a citizen; for, if he is born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of his birth, and not his country.
293 posted on 12/02/2008 9:55:39 PM PST by aruanan
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To: aruanan
The idea that one must be born in the country and to parents who are both citizens of that country to be a natural born citizen of that country was common knowledge amongst those who wrote the Constitution.

Then they could have put that language in the Constitution, but they didn't. That requirement exists nowhere in either the Constitution or in Federal law. A treatise from 1703 is not a legitimate source for this issue.

And, let's not forget the 14th Amendment, which made it clear that anyone born in the US is a citizen.

297 posted on 12/03/2008 7:12:55 AM PST by Citizen Blade (What would Ronald Reagan do?)
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