Replies

I don’t what in Hell you mean by “there is confusion”.

The three types of citizenship I listed are legally recognized by our Federal government. These three were listed on Immigration and Naturalization Service’s website in 2008.

Quite the contrary. Your analysis is thoroughly confusing.

Please go back and re-read the United States Constitution carefully. It defines the two distinct classifications of citizenship in the U.S. No more, no less.

First, Article II clearly states that you can either be a Citizen of the United States on September 17, 1787 OR a Natural Born Citizen. According to your logic, these two classifications in the citizenship clause are not interchangeable because the framing fathers were neophytes who didn't understand what a coordinating conjunction is, so they came up with a fourth requirement for the presidency with absolutely no purpose other than to confuse historians and agitate "birthers".

Second, neither the I.N.S. nor Congress can redefine these two classifications because the U.S. Constitution only grants Congress the authority to define universal naturalization statute. What you posted are technical types, or subsets of "Citizen of the United States" to make it convenient for the federal government to process immigrants. The 14th Amendment is quite clear on this matter. All "native born" means is that the child in question is born on U.S. soil and is therefore a Citizen of the United States. Elaborating on this is a self-defeating waste of time because every "Citizen of the United States" is equal in the eyes of the law, and that law is the Constitution of the United States.

First can we quit using the incorrect term for what is in the Constitution.

Its “natural born Citizen”

It is not “Natural Born Citizen”, “natural-born Citizen”, “natural born citizen”.

No hyphen and ONLY Citizen is capitalized.

Is this picky - no! It makes a difference.

Citizen is a defined term in the document and thus why it is capitalized. Standard legal approach used even then. “natural” and “born” are not capitalized. They are not proper nouns and are not specifically defined in the document. They are merely adjectives used to add detail and more narrowly describe the proper noun - Citizen.

This means that there is no formalized ‘term’ of Natural Born Citizen with all caps. This abuse of the wording of the document is maddening.

natural and born each standalone. “natural born Citizen” is equal to “natural Citizen and born Citizen”. These phrases both mean exactly the same thing.

So now we can determine what the founders meant without much trouble.

A “natural Citizen” is one who gets their citizenship through “natural law” and not “positive (man made) law”. The founders believed and used “natural law” as a higher level of law that their man-made (positive) laws. Natural law meant your citizenship followed your father - period. That is ‘natural’. Everything else, including citizenship based on only jus soli is positive law.

A “born Citizen” is a Citizen FROM BIRTH. Meaning at birth and continuous. Many only assume it is a point in time. But look up the adjective ‘born’ - it will include ‘FROM birth’. Certainly this is what the founding fathers meant.

So your Citizenship must be natural (based on natural law, i.e. following of your fathers citizenship) and continuous from your birth.

Even if you do not agree with this please, please use the correct term - “natural born Citizen”.