If they are considered as natural born citizens, where is the exclusion for qualifying for the Presidency?
“If they are considered as natural born citizens, where is the exclusion for qualifying for the Presidency?”
The statutory, therefore manmade and artificial, law using the “natural born citizens” phrase was the United States Naturalization Law of March 26, 1790 (1 Stat. 103), “An Act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization.” Natural born citizens cannot be naturalized, because they are already natural born citizens requiring no naturalization or naturalization laws. The Constitution provides the U.S. Government no powers to grant citizenship to a natural born citizen. The Constitution only authorizes the U.S. Government to grant U.S. citizenship to aliens by means of a uniform Rule of Naturalization. The soon to be repealed Act naturalized the foreign born and alien children of U.S. Citizens born abroad. To be a natural born citizen a person had to be born in the United States with U.S. Citizen parents. Until 1866 the children born in the United States with alien parents were themselves aliens who had to become U.S. citizens by applying for naturalization.
The United States Naturalization Law of March 26, 1790 (1 Stat. 103) used the phrase, “shall be considered as natural born citizens,” in much the same manner as it used the sentence: And the children of such persons so naturalized, dwelling within the United States, being under the age of twenty-one years at the time of such naturalization, shall also be considered as citizens of the United States.” In other words, the “shall be considered as” was for purposes of administering the immigration and naturalization laws and not for administering every other law affecting U.S. citizens or natural born U.S. citizens.
The effects of this difference in rights and duties is seen in the inequalities of the two different means of acquiring the U.S. citizenship. The person who shall be considered as a natural born citizen can have that U.S. citizenship revoked by the Department of State and the Federal courts; whereas the Department of State has no power to revoke the U.S. citizenship of an actual natural born citizen. The person who shall be considered as a natural born citizen for purposes of immigration and naturalization must satisfy residency requirements to obtain and maintain U.S. citizenship; whereas an actual natural born U.S. Citizen does not have that same burden to retain U.S. citizenship. Likewise with the eligibility for the Office of the president of the United States and the office of the Vice president of the United States, the person who shall be considered as a natural born citizen for purposes of immigration and naturalization is not eligible for those offices; whereas an actual natural born citizen is free of natural born duties to foreign allegiances and thereby satisfies the purpose of the Constitution’s natural born citizen clause to exclude foreigners from those offices and command of the American army. The authors of the Constitution’s natural born citizen clause were well acquainted with English-British laws that all naturalized persons and denizens were excluded from being members of the Privy Council, the House of Lords, the House of Commons, civil or military office, place of trust, grant of lands, grant of tenements or hereditaments from the Crown or others to trust for him according to The Act of Settlement 1701. The authors of the Constitution were far more inclusive than the Act of Settlement 1701, but they did reserve the Office of the President and the Office of the Vice President for those persons who were born in the United States with U.S. citizen parents then known as natural born citizens of the United States.