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To: thackney
Just out of curiosity, why was that 1790 definition changed from "natural born citizen" to "citizens" in 1795?
SEC. 3. And be it further enacted, that the children of persons duly naturalized, dwelling within the United States, and being under the age of twenty-one years, at the time of such naturalization, and the children of citizens of the United States, born out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States, shall be considered as citizens of the United States: Provided, That the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons, whose fathers have never been resident of the United States: Provided also, That no person heretofore proscribed by any state, or who has been legally convicted of having joined the army of Great Britain during the late war, shall be admitted a citizen as foresaid, without the consent of the legislature of the state, in which such person was proscribed.
Seems like personal agendas get in the way of defining natural born citizenship just like they do defining marriage nowadays or defining global warming or climate change or anything else you can think of.

Perhaps our current troubles with absolutes and rigid definitions demonstrates one of the reasons why John Adams wrote to the Officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massacusetts on October 11, 1798 that:

"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
We are not that people at the moment, but we could be again.

We went from the 1890 "Gay 90s" to the fundamentally redefined very gay 1990s.

Sooner or later the pendulum will swing back again.

110 posted on 12/21/2015 10:32:39 AM PST by GBA (Here in the matrix, life is but a dream.)
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To: GBA

Sections 1 and 2 of that act defined what was required to become a naturalized citizen of the US.

Section 3 defines who that process does not apply, they are already citizens by the conditions of their birth.


112 posted on 12/21/2015 10:52:11 AM PST by thackney (life is fragile, handle with prayer)
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