"which means to me"
I am seeing people making interpretations of what they want "natural-born citizen" to mean rather than going back to original intent and source documents (e.g. Vattel).
I think defining NBC is an emotional issue for some, because it is "anti-egalitarian." Stick to the firm definition of NBC, and you conclude that no, not everyone can be President. Not even if you born here and were an upstanding citizen. Not even if Mommy and Daddy were good Americans but you were born overseas. Not even if you were naturalized and served in the Armed Services.
Can you imagine a modern American schoolteacher surveying her classroom and telling her pupils, "Not all of you can grow up to be President, you have to have American parents, and be born here in America"? Can you imagine the screams and the tears, the crying about discrimination and unfairness? But we seem to have come to the point where we care more about the feelings of an individual than the welfare of a whole country.
I know I was taught (long ago, ha ha) in school that only a child of American citizen parents, born on American soil, could become President. It was in our class on American history. We were also taught the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Learning about what the Constitutional requirements for President were was a sobering thought but this law is part of our nation's history.
A natural-born citizen, as stipulated in Article II, section 1 of the Constitution, is one who has an ironclad allegiance to his country through birth and parentage. He is in a sort of state of grace; he has not earned his status by law: he is at least one generation removed from statutory citizenship. Loyalty to his home country is an essential, inborn part of who he is.
The people who feel squeamish about the NBC requirement for the Presidency also feel squeamish about the need for national defense. We have firm boundaries about our country's borders and we need to remember we have these boundaries for citizenship too, though some groups have tried hard to blur or weaken them.
“I am seeing people making interpretations of what they want ‘natural-born citizen’ to mean rather than going back to original intent and source documents (e.g. Vattel).”
Vattel is NOT a source material for the Constitution, nor the intent of those who wrote it.
“A natural-born citizen, as stipulated in Article II, section 1 of the Constitution, is one who has an ironclad allegiance to his country through birth and parentage”
That is nowhere stipulated in the Constitution.
Great post!
“I am seeing people making interpretations of what they want “natural-born citizen” to mean rather than going back to original intent and source documents (e.g. Vattel).”
Vattel is a Swiss theorist and we ought not be in the habit of basing Constitutional interpretation on foreigners whose views were *never* put into US law directly. that goes *against* original intent. Further it goes *against* the Constitution to *ignore* the 14th amendment, which clearly redefined birthright citizenship and therefore what it meant to be natural-born citizen. Last, the view is in contradiction with English common law, which courts have held is a base for interpretation since Constitutional legal terms and contexts used that as a base.
In short, you are doing the opposite of what you claim you do when you rest your weak argument on a foreign source like Vattel.
We are better off going back to text, like 14th amendment, and SCOTUS interpretation of that, Wong Kim Ark ruling in particular, to to a foreigner like Vattel.
“I think defining NBC is an emotional issue for some”
Clearly. Why are you so invested in avoiding the obvious conlcusion that comes from looking at common-law and US court cases, that ‘natural-born citizen’ is just a term meaning ‘all those who acquired citizenship at birth’? It seems the argument is more emotional/agenda-driven than based on pure legalism.
Again, for your review:
http://leahy.senate.gov/issues/Judiciary/McCainAnalysis.pdf
The Constitution does not define the meaning of “natural born Citizen.” The U.S.
Supreme Court gives meaning to terms that are not expressly defined in the Constitution by
looking to the context in which those terms are used; to statutes enacted by the First Congress,
Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783, 790-91 (1983); and to the common law at the time of the
Founding. United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649, 655 (1898). These sources all confirm
that the phrase “natural born” includes both birth abroad to parents who were citizens, and birth
within a nation’s territory and allegiance.