The Constitution does not say that you can be president if you have a likelihood to hold allegiance to the US. It says you have to be a NBC. Marie is legally qualified, Obama is probably not. (More evidence is required). Even if you showed Obama as being the most loyal, America-loving person out there, if he is not a NBC, you could still not make him President without changing the Constitution. We are still bound to the law. The constitution is there to protect us. It's not fool proof, but it probably works most of the time.
I agree with you that the NBC clause was written to make sure that the person in office's primary allegiance was to the US, but I still say Marie probably has the stronger claim based in law. NBC status is not a guarantee of loyalty. I'm sure that there are NBCs out there who are not loyal to the US. But people are less likely to betray a people to whom they are bound by blood and where their family is. Its not fool proof, but it mitigates the risk of treachery significantly, and is why it was put into the US Constitution. Yeah, Marie's situation is odd and her loyalty may be questioned, but legally how can you dispute her NBC status? She never renounced her citizenship as far as I am aware, and I don't know if she ever took up Swedish Citizenship.
Obama has split loyalties from the get go. We don't even know if his mother ever renounced her US citizenship or not. She did marry and Indonesian and may have renounced her citizenship in the process. Who knows? The question is therefore, is not who is most likely to be loyal to the US, Marie or Obama. The question is which one is an NBC. Marie was ruled in a court of law to be NBC, Obama never has been.
“But people are less likely to betray a people to whom they are bound by blood and where their family is.”
Hmmm...Barry had a bond of blood thru his mother. I don’t see much reason for a bond thru someone who didn’t live with your mother, didn’t live with you, and left both of you by the time you could talk.
Marie had no relatives here, while Obama had mother and grandparents, and his grandparents raised him.
“We don’t even know if his mother ever renounced her US citizenship or not. She did marry and Indonesian and may have renounced her citizenship in the process. Who knows?”
She divorced in Hawaii. Since her husband was Indonesian, the court would have no jurisdiction unless she was an American. Nor has anyone produced any evidence that she renounced her citizenship, and she lived in the US for some time.
“The Constitution does not say that you can be president if you have a likelihood to hold allegiance to the US. It says you have to be a NBC.”
From Indiana’s Court:
The Wong Kim Ark Court explained:
The fundamental principle of the common law with regard to English nationality was birth within the allegiance-also called ‘ligealty’, ‘obedience’, ‘faith’, or ‘power’ - of the king. The principle embraced all persons born within the king’s allegiance, and subject to his protection. Such allegiance and protection were mutual,-as expressed in the maxim, ‘Protectio trahit subjectionem, et subjectio protectionem’,- and were not restricted to natural-born subjects and naturalized subjects, or to those who had taken an oath of allegiance; but were predicable of aliens in amity, so long as they were within the kingdom.
Children, born in England, of such aliens, were therefore natural-born subjects. But the children, born within the realm, of foreign ambassadors, or the children of alien enemies, born during and within their hostile occupation of part of the king’s dominions, were not natural-born subjects, because not born within the allegiance, the obedience, or the power, or, as would be said at this day, within the jurisdiction, of the king.”
For their definition of NBC, they don’t refer to Vattel but common law. Some are unconvinced by that reasoning. I find it completely reasonable, and think other courts will take the approach the Indiana Court did.