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To: Political Junkie Too; LucyT; Fred Nerks; Brown Deer
Native was in fact the issue the real delegates viewed as controlling alright...

Read further down in the linked thread to see other posters' documentation on what the word "native" meant at the time.

Sure, but the point about foreign and half foreign is the same thing.

But there is also correspondence among others (some of which as I recall is a fairly recent discovery) who were delegates and all they talk about is place of birth.

But there is a reason for that and it comes back down to what the US tries to do to people on the other side of this coin--make them citizens and levy taxes on their income even though they aren't here. Under international law doctrines, the sovereign of the place of birth has significant jurisdiction.

On the other hand, a country can make a person a statutory citizen and that doesn't extend any power at all. Maybe a third of all American's with European ancestry are citizens of some other country in Europe--most don't even know it. Irrelevant.

Jefferson's letter happened to be consistent with where the Court was going at the time the religion issue appeared but as a general proposition, the Court doesn't give a lot of weight to argument's like this in much of any case.

Bottom line, and this is the end of our discussion; the weight of whatever history there is sits on place of birth. And the legislative history is not the only reason the Court is going to come down on this side of the issue.

70 posted on 06/23/2012 2:27:14 PM PDT by David
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To: David
My last point: there is a separation between the definition of citizen, and the further qualification for president that the citizen be natural-born.

Citizen can be based on whatever definition you choose, place of birth alone if you wish. But after passing the citizen test, one must pass the natural-born test to be president.

You haven't addressed why the Founders added the additional qualifier of natural-born (and excluded it in the grandfather clause) if place-of-birth is enough to define ordinary citizenship.

-PJ

71 posted on 06/23/2012 2:37:01 PM PDT by Political Junkie Too (If you can vote for President, then your children can run for President.)
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