There are plenty of Americans who would prefer to believe that people born here of foreign nationals are not citizens but that has not been, to the best of my knowledge, the traditional understanding. The early presidents were covered by the provision that references the time of the adoption of the constitution. Those exceptions ran out towards the end of the first half of the nineteenth century when John Tyler (b. 1790) who was our tenth POTUS took over upon the death of William Henry Harrison.
The citizenship of those actually born here, even of parents were foreign nationals, is not questioned generally. The phenomenon of "illegals" entering the US without its permission to give birth here and claim citizenship for any child so born may anger many but it has not changed the law.
Likewise, the election of Obozo as POTUS has angered many on the basis that we know his father was NOT a citizen and that his paternal grandmother has been quoted as saying she was present at his birth in Kenya. I have yet to hear of anyone questioning the citizenship of his mother who was certainly an American citizen by both birth and by the nationality of her parents.
There were people on the Demonrat side in the 2008 election who responded to "birther" complaints about Obama with the perfectly ridiculous claim that Senator John McCain (however reprehensible a candidate and senator) was born in the Panama Canal Zone while his father served there in the navy and his mother was there as well.
This stuff is growing like topsy and has gotten out of hand.
Let us posit that Obozo the Elder lived his entire life as a British subject up until Obozo's birth since Kenya was a colony of Great Britain in 1960 or whenever and that Obozo's mother Sideny Anne was an American citizen but gave birth to Obozo in Kenya, he would still be an American citizen by birth to his American citizen mother. This would be true if we changed none of those facts but he was born in outer space. There may have been a statute in effect at the time of Obozo's birth that would have required his mother (but NOT his father) to have attained the age of 21 by the time he was born. Again, there is no constitutional basis for enacting such a statute distinguishing and denying the ability of a twenty-year old mother to pass her citizenship to her child in circumstances where a similarly situated father could do so. Anyone challenging Obozo's "natural born citizenship" would be expected to vindicate the constitutionality of such a statute despite the obvious lack of a rational basis for its enactment.
In Senator Rubio's case, his birth within the USA would suffice even if his parents were here "illegally" which I do not believe has been alleged by anyone and would be irrelevant even if they were here "illegally."
This is true even if people REALLY, REALLY want to believe otherwise unless you have constitutional language of which I am not aware further defining "natural born citizen." Therefore, this is not QED.
We have sooooo many REAL issues to address and we have no POTUS candidate of a major party to address them at the rate things are going. Can we PUHLEEEZE give the birther stuff a rest or, alternatively, PROVE the relevance of it to Obozo or Rubio? Thanks.
It's the only issue as far as I'm concerned.