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Wonder what prompted the proposal of that constitutional amendmendment by Congressman Foster back in 1798, which would have required all Senators and Representatives to be natural born citizens (unless they were citizens at the founding in 1776). Could there have been Senators or Representatives whose loyalty to the new country was under suspicion? (1798, during the Adams administration, was in a period in which such suspicions were common, and led to the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts.) Yes, immigration was a double-edged sword, then as it now. John Adams accompanied Benjamin Franklin in their travels to England and France in the 1770s before becoming the first US ambassador to England in 1780. Adams had a keen understanding of how foreign powers might attempt to infiltrate the United States to gain control. Although the Framers wanted (and needed) immigrants to help grow the new Republic, they also were concerned that the King (or other nations) would send infiltrators loyal to a Crown into America's government. In between 1776 and the Constitution's ratification by all 13 states in 1789, monarchs like Prince Henry of Prussia and the Bishop of Osnaburgh (2nd son of George III), tried to “invite themselves” to become America's new king. So the Framers' concerns were VERY valid. Add to it an undeclared naval war between the US and France (who helped liberate the US in the Revolutionary War) from 1798 to 1800, and what may be seen today as mild xenophobia was a GENUINE threat to the sovereignty of the United States ... borne out in part when the Brits hired willing American Indian mercenaries, in England's attempt to regain control of the US in the War of 1812 (as done also in the 1780s).
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