In 1875, U.S. Attorney General Edwards Pierrepont was presented with a query from the Secretary of State, Hamilton Fish. A young man, surnamed Steinkauler (his first name was never mentioned), had been born in Missouri in 1855, a year after his father was naturalized a U.S. citizen. When he was four years old, his father returned to Germany with him and both had stayed there ever since. The father has relinquished his American citizenship. Now the young man is 20 years old and about to be drafted into the German army. What is this young man's situation as a native-born American citizen? After studying the relevant legal authorities, Pierrepont wrote:Under the treaty [of 1868 with Germany], and in harmony with American doctrine, it is clear that Steinkauler the father abandoned his naturalization in America and became a German subject (his son being yet a minor), and that by virtue of German laws the son acquired German nationality. It is equally clear that the son, by birth, has American nationality, and hence he has two nationalities, one natural, the other acquired. .... Young Steinkauler is a native-born American citizen. There is no law of the United States under which his father or any other person can deprive him of his birthright. He can return to America at the age of 21, and in due time, if the people elect, he can become President of the United States..... I am of opinion that when he reaches the age of 21 years he can then elect whether he will return and take the nationality of his birth, with its duties and privileges, or retain the nationality acquired by the act of his father.
The more I read, the more I am convinced that "natural born citizen" refers to someone who was a citizen "naturally", ie they were not "naturalized". This covers anyone born on US soil, regardless of the citizenship of their parents. Should their parents not be US citizens at the time of their birth, they may have dual citizenship, but they ARE natural born citizens. While I would like there to be a requirement that both parents must be citizens AND that they be born on US soil, such a requirement does NOT exist in the constitution.
Out of extreme and curmudgeonly xenophobia, I refuse to believe that the offspring of illegal aliens are "Natural Born Citizens" of the US. They are citizens of their parents' country. Steinkauler was indeed a natural born citizen, because both of his parents were citizens. That could not be removed from him. Mamá (or Mutti, as the case may be) having been automatically naturalized in those days when Papá was.
What is needed here is a ruling from the balck-robed bumkissers club whom we pay dearly for their opinions, aka The SCOTUS. If they agree with you, I'm buying, and of course, vice-versa.
Perhaps you will join me in urging them to define the classes of citizenship after the Resident Recumbent is driven from public housing, along with Aunt Zeituni and Uncle Onyanyo.
Why did they expressly choose a Natural Born citizen instead of any other flavor?
What is the purest citizenship one can have? Which form doesn't have any allegience or fealty, legal or otherwise, to any other nation but one?
Only Natural Born, born in country to two citizen parents, has that quality of citizenship, by birthright, not by law or treaty, and passes the purity test.
Ours was a newly formed nation, just barely standing, with many foreign enemies, not just England. For the single most powerful human in our government, with 1/3 of the total US power at his control, our FFs wanted loyalty to America alone, from birth. Only one class of citizenship offers that potential.
It's not as hard as people try to make it. If you were writing the standard for the new nation, you would choose for citizenship, eligibility with the highest quality, the most loyalty, the legally most pure citizenship for the single most powerful office in the nation.
Only one fills those requirements and you would not do with lower quality. Why would you go with less?
Stand by your guns Crusher. There are a lot of idiots trolling this website who make up laws to suit their agenda. They cannot produce the law that says NBC requires citizen parents so their only strategy is to belittle those who stand behind the Constitution AS WRITTEN. Reason escapes them because even an idiot should understand that natural means not naturalized by law.