So, in your opinion, it is only necessary that one have a single citizen parent in order to be a "natural born citizen"? It makes you wonder why our Founders bothered.
Washington, for one, was probably just traumatized by that whole "Benedict Arnold" thing.
I also seem to recall that there were many German immigrants in the U.S. at the time of World War II who were subject to being conscripted into the German Army. Am I wrong about that?
Again, there are only two types of US citizens as defined by law and supported by court precedence – those born on US soil regardless of the parent(s) citizenship status or those born abroad to one or two citizen parent such as to those born to US diplomats or to members of the US military serving abroad – all natural born citizens and “naturalized” citizens that being those not born on the US or meeting the above conditions who have to become “naturalized”.
I also seem to recall that there were many German immigrants in the U.S. at the time of World War II who were subject to being conscripted into the German Army. Am I wrong about that?
I’d really like to see some evidence for that claim. Are you saying that many Germans who had immigrated to the US before WWII and where legally living here, a great number perhaps for many years, even those who had become citizens, were forcibly conscripted into the German army? What, did the SS and Gestapo knock come knocking on their door in New Jersey or Indiana or Iowa in the middle of the night and forcibly drag them out of their homes, force them to board a German ship and join the German Army and force them to fight against the country they chose to come to and live in?
Someone who has legally immigrated here and is a documented resident alien is subject the laws of the United States – all of them. The only exception is registered diplomats from other countries who are still bound to the laws of their country. In fact as my father was not yet a naturalized citizen a year after Pearl Harbor he was drafted – by the US Army, as I understand, he couldn’t refuse, even if he had wanted to, based on his status.
Yes, there were some German Americans who sided with the Nazis, belonged to the German American Bund during the 1930’s. And many of them faced harsh consequences for their actions when war was declared. And a good number of them by that time had already renounced their membership and were no longer involved and demonstrated their allegiance to the United States. Overall they represented a very small percentage of Americans with German ancestry – most of whom were completely and unquestionably loyal to the US. Don’t even get me started on the internment of US citizens of Japanese descent, many who were US citizens for several generations – that’s an whole other topic of conversation.
Charles Lindbergh for example, the American born son of a Swedish immigrant and an American born citizen, became a spokesman for the antiwar America First Committee and expressed what was deemed to be pro-Nazi sympathies. It should be pointed out however than after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor; he tried to be re-commissioned in the USAAF. He was refused but went on to be a consultant to the USAAF and aviation companies involved in the war effort and went on to fly combat missions as a civilian aviator.