Defending the border or the very concept of citizenship, both under direct and relentless threat from the globalist threat, are in my opinion very different questions than an obscure 19th century interpretation of a little used constitutional phrase. I was among those who considently advocated for and demanded proof that Barack Obama was born in the United States, and we also know that according to the laws in place at the time of his birth, had he not been born in the United States, he would not have been born a citizen.
So, yeah, because of Trump he was forced to release a fraudulently produced birth certificate, but at least we were able to reinforce the rule that the President of the United States must have been born a citizen to be eligible. I’m sure you would agree that had we just let that question slide, sometime about right now, the traitorous left would be arguing that the precedent set by Obama had essentially negated that requirement.
But if you’re going to go to the mat for something like this, it has to be a bright line. Taking it to analyzing the citizenship of the parents of kids who were without question born in the United States would blur the distinction between who is eligible and who is not to the point that the end result would probably be to weaken that requirement.
In theory the requirement of both citizens is based on the idea that the purpose of the provision was to mitigate against dual loyalties, like if you were born to a foreign citizen, you would have acquired some citizenship rights in the country of your foreign parent(s) that could in theory be exercised at any time, thus placing your loyalty in question. It was of course a real live concern at the time of the founding, as the British Crown recognize citizenship via lineage wherever the child might be born
But in the modern era, requiring two citizen parents does not accomplish that objective. If you take my son for example, he was born in the United States to two U.S. citizens. No problem right? But he has Canadian citizenship and a Canadian passport. How? Because the United States no longer requires renunciation of foreign allegiances upon naturalization, and his mother is a naturalized citizen of Canadian birth.
Maybe you could enunciate a rule that said that nobody with any possible claim to foreign citizenship can become President of the United States, but that is not the text of the provision, so now you have a conflict between “textualism” and “original intent”, which would then potentially split the conservative justices, paving the way for the liberal justices to form a plurality, or a majority with Roberts, for a decision doing away with the provision altogether, which we both know they’d gladly do.
So if you’re interested in defending the general principle that there should be a natural born citizenship requirement in the Constitution, you are best served by settling on an interpretation that is defensible. The simplest, clearest, most broadly understood interpretation of the provision is that one is either a citizen at birth (natural born) or a citizen by immigration (naturalized), and only the former may be President. In other words, immigrants are disqualified from running for President. Only their children may run.
We might be able to defend that over the course of the next few decades. You can bet that there are powerful forces on the left plotting to get rid of it, and open the Presidency to immigrants, but that is our best chance. Trying to talk about which native born citizens can or cannot run only takes us backwards.