A citizen then—to draw his description as one of the people—I deem him, who acts a personal or a represented part in the legislation of his country. He has other rights; but his legislative I consider as his characteristic right. In this view, a citizen of the United States is he, who is a citizen of at least some one state in the Union: for the members of the house of representatives in the national legislature are chosen, in each state, by electors, who, in that state, have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the state legislature.c In this view, a citizen of Pennsylvania is he, who has resided in the state two years; and, within that time, has paid a state or county tax: or he is between the ages of twenty one and twenty two years, and the son of a citizen.Only the sons of freeholders were citizens? Such was never the claim.
What this demonstrates, which you fail to understand and so spectacularly misconstrued, is that a son of a citizen is a citizen without operation of statute.
The son of an alien naturalizes upon the naturalization of the father, by operation of statute.
According to the above, you could become a naturalized citizen of Pennsylvania by residing in the state two years and paying a state or county tax.
The son of a citizen has no such requirement, no statutes, no particular action, but he is a citizen. Such is a natural born citizen.
” According to the above, you could become a naturalized citizen of Pennsylvania by residing in the state two years and paying a state or county tax.
The son of a citizen has no such requirement, no statutes, no particular action, but he is a citizen. Such is a natural born citizen.”
State laws on state citizenship varied, but US law - that which applies today, other than residency requirements for voting in a state - had those born in the US born citizens, regardless of parentage. Those born to citizen abroad have also regularly been born citizens, and do not undergo naturalization. Naturalization is what the two kids I adopted went thru, to become US citizens well after their births.
As for James Wilson:
“Between a subject naturalized and a subject natural born, the distinction is merely nominal as to private rights: it applies only to the manner, in which those rights are devolved. On one they are devolved by his birth: on the other, by the consent of the nation, expressed in the parliament. With regard, however, to publick rights, the case is widely different. By statutes made even since the revolution, no subject naturalized can be a member of parliament; and no bill for naturalization can be received in either house of parliament, without such a disabling clause...
...What a very different spirit animates and pervades her American sons! Indeed it is proper that it should do so. The insulated policy of the British nation would as ill befit the expansive genius of our institutions, as the hills, the ponds, and the rivulets, which are scattered over their island, would adequately represent the mountains, and rivers, and lakes of the United States...
...In a former lecture,z we have seen how easily the essential rights of citizenship can be acquired in the United States, and in every state of the Union. Let us now see, how liberally the doors are thrown open for admission to the publick trusts and honours, as well as to the private rights and privileges, of our country.
At the end of two years from the time, at which a foreigner “of good character”—for numbers without virtue are not our object—a former mode of “better peopling his majesty’s plantations” is now fallen into disrepute—at the end of two years from the time,a at which a foreigner of good character sets his foot in this land of generosity as well as freedom, he is entitled to become, if he chooses,b a citizen of our national government. At the end of seven years, a term not longer than that which is frequently required for an apprenticeship to the plainest trade, the citizen may become legislator; for he is eligible as a representative in the congress of the United States.c After having, in that capacity, undergone the honourable but short probationship of two years, the doors even of our national senate are opened as far as to receive him.”
Note there is only one office not open to a naturalized citizen - the Presidency. That demonstrates that the NBC clause is to prevent naturalized citizens from being President. And as the alternative to naturalized citizens, there is, in the US Constitution, natural born citizens. Those citizens not naturalized, but citizens from birth, are in the second category, in opposition to the definition of the first.