This issue of Natural Born citizenship comes up a lot on Free Republic.
Some Freepers say that both of your parents must have been citizens at the time of your birth, for you to be a natural born citizen.
Other Freepers say as long as you yourself were born in America that makes you natural born. Those Freepers say that if born in America, you didn’t have to be naturalized to be a citizen. So then you are a natural born citizen regardless of your parent’s citizenship.
Which Freepers are we supposed to believe?
Whichever ones you like best. It really does not matter.
The question of Natural Born citizenship was rendered moot after Barack Obama was installed as President.
After all, the Constitutions is a "living document". It means whatever the Democrats say that it means at any given time.
We still keep clinging to a fig leaf of pretense in the "rule of law". But that is not what we have now.
One other natural born standard may be that you lacked foreign citizenship at birth and only had American citizenship at birth.
The purpose of the natural born clause was to ensure inherent loyalty to the United States (and owing no duty to any foreign government or potentate).
There is consensus among academics that those born on
American soil, except children born to foreign ambassadors
or to hostile soldiers on U.S. territory, both of whom owe
allegiance to a different sovereign, are natural born citizens,
or jus soli, regardless of parental citizenship status.
Natural-born-citizen clause (United States) - Wikipedia
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Natural-born-citizen_cla...
I prefer not to rely upon the arguments of any Freeper in this regard, but the words and decisions of the founding generation.
In 1814, the SCOTUS heard a case known as the Venus Merchantman case. Among other issues, it concerned itself with the impressment of US merchant sailors by the British Royal Navy into their service on the high seas. That SCOTUS, ALL of whom being members of the founding generation defined what a NATURAL BORN CITIZEN was by quoting the entire 212th paragraph of Emmerich De Vatel’s Law of Nations, which was considered to be THE treatise on international law and was referred to regularly by statesmen at the time. That definition, which was incorporated into the majority opinion authored by Justice Livingston follows:
Quote of section 212, Chapter 19, Book 1, Law of Nations, by Vattel, written in 1758:
Ҥ 212 - Citizens and Natives. The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to
this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its
advantages. The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents
who are citizens. As the society cannot exist and perpetuate itself otherwise than by the
children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and
succeed to all their rights. The society is supposed to desire this, in consequence of what
it owes to its own preservation; and it is presumed, as matter of course, that each citizen,
on entering into society, reserves to his children the right of becoming members of it. The
country of the fathers is therefore that of the children; and these become true citizens
merely by their tacit consent. We shall soon see whether, on their coming to the years of
discretion, they may renounce their right, and what they owe to the society in which they
were born. I say, that, in order to be of the country, it is necessary that a person be born of
a father who is a citizen; for, if he is born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of
his birth, and not his country. “
Note that the above reference was made in 1804, 64 years before the adoption of the 14th amendment, which makes no reference to, nor does it modify Article II, Section 1, clause 5 of the constitution, no matter what the original intent might have been. The framers of the constitution were patriarchs, who believed that the citizenship status of the children followed that of the father. It is clear that they were concerned with undue foreign influence upon the office of the presidency, PARTICULARLY from a father owing allegiance to a foreign sovereignty.
To believe that the framers would have accepted that a person born a British subject, (as Obama himself admitted to being owing to his FATHER) when they had to exempt themselves with the grandfather exemption in clause 5 of Section 2 in order to be POTUS eligible, beggars belief and logic. Subsequent rulings of the SCOTUS in Minor vs Happersett, and Wong Kim Ark vs US only bolster this conclusion.
One interpretation of the Constitution has been consistent from 1789 to present.
The other interpretation was borrowed from European countries that have tradition, no real constitution.
It is funny seeing FReepers repeat UnAmerican Europeans arguments as if they are relevant in the US.
The ones the USSC decided in favor of.