It’s a tricky question.
When my wife went into labor eight weeks early in Paris (both of us natural born US citizens, on our final vacation as just a couple), would that have prevented our oldest child from being a natural born citizen if a French doctor had not been able to stop her labor?
I suspect even 200 years ago, “natural born citizen” would have been like porn - you know it when you see it, but not everyone would have agreed. I suspect an “anchor baby” born here to someone illegally on our soil or even to a tourist or merchant who was not a legal permanent resident would not have been considered a natural born citizen back then.
I would like to see Congress or even a constitutional amendment define the term simply. Hard cases make bad law, and we want to at least outline who (other than those on the vague borderlines that crop up) clearly is or is not a natural born citizen.
“It’s a tricky question.”
It’s very simple. Birth abroad and outside U.S. jurisdiction, without diplomatic immunity, results in the acquisition of foreign allegiance by the child at birth. The only means of acquiring U.S. citizenship when born abroad is by the authority of a naturalization law and naturalization at birth or after birth. See:
United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649, 18 S.Ct. 456, 42 L.Ed. said “A person born out of the jurisdiction of the United States can only become a citizen by being naturalized....”
“When my wife went into labor eight weeks early in Paris (both of us natural born US citizens, on our final vacation as just a couple), would that have prevented our oldest child from being a natural born citizen if a French doctor had not been able to stop her labor?”
Yes, such a child cannot be a natural born citizen. Birth abroad without diplomatic immunity is an alien birth requiring naturalization at birth or after birth to acquire U.S. citizenship.
“I suspect even 200 years ago, “natural born citizen†would have been like porn - you know it when you see it, but not everyone would have agreed.”
Actually, due to people being acutely aware of their class privileges, they would have been acutely aware of the fact persons born abroad were not allowed to hold any public office from a Member of Parliament down to the lowliest local official. The new United States suddenly changed all of that by removing those broad prohibitions against all persons born abroad, except for the Vice President and the President of the United States. As those first generations of Americans passed away, the general memory of those restrictions upon the alien or foreign faded from the public memory.
“I suspect an “anchor baby†born here to someone illegally on our soil or even to a tourist or merchant who was not a legal permanent resident would not have been considered a natural born citizen back then.”
No, they were not, as determined in the U.S. Supreme Court case Scott v. Sanford (1857).
“I would like to see Congress or even a constitutional amendment define the term simply.”
The Constitution has no power to change the laws of nature and natural law that have been in existence for thousands of years before the Constitution. The Constitution is a legislative act and Positive Law, which is the opposite of Natural Law. The Constitution can observe the existene of a natural law, but it cannot make natural law or redefine natural law or natural born citizenship. The Constitution granted the Congress the enumerated power “To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization.” Naturalization is where manmade statutory law is used to Make an alien person a citizen for the purposes of the administration of the law, despite not being born as an actual citizen. Think of it as being like a father at litem, meaning a father under the law, despite not being the actual natural father or biological father. A naturalized person is alien born, regardless of alien parents or citizen parents, and a statutory law is used to confer upon the alien born person some but not all of the conditions of citizenship enjoyed by an actual natural born citizen.
“Hard cases make bad law, and we want to at least outline who (other than those on the vague borderlines that crop up) clearly is or is not a natural born citizen.”
The only reason there is any serious difficulties is because of the sustained efforts by certain people to deny, lie, and obfuscate the actual historical record and usage of the terminology for their own ambitious purposes.