Actually, no.
I’m sorry, but you have 1790 completely backwards.
While some constitutional issues are truly difficult, with framing-era sources either nonexistent or contradictory, here, the relevant materials clearly indicate that a “natural born Citizen” means a citizen from birth with no need to go through naturalization proceedings. The Supreme Court has long recognized that two particularly useful sources in understanding constitutional terms are British common law
Both confirm that the original meaning of the phrase “natural born Citizen” includes persons born abroad who are citizens from birth based on the citizenship of a parent.
As to the British practice, laws in force in the 1700s recognized that children born outside of the British Empire to subjects of the Crown were subjects themselves and explicitly used “natural born” to encompass such children.
These statutes provided that children born abroad to subjects of the British Empire were “natural-born Subjects . . . to all Intents, Constructions, and Purposes whatsoever.”
The Framers, of course, would have been intimately familiar with these statutes and the way they used terms like “natural born,” since the statutes were binding law in the colonies before the Revolutionary War. They were also well documented in Blackstone’s Commentaries,
No doubt informed by this longstanding tradition, just three years after the drafting of the Constitution, the First Congress established that children born abroad to U.S. citizens were U.S. citizens at birth, and explicitly recognized that such children were “natural born Citizens (under the The Naturalization Act of 1790) provided that “the children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens: Provided, That the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States
The actions and understandings of the First Congress are particularly persuasive because so many of the Framers of the Constitution were also members of the First Congress. That is particularly true in this instance, as eight of the eleven members of the committee that proposed the natural born eligibility requirement to the Convention served in the First Congress and none objected to a definition of “natural born Citizen” that included persons born abroad to a citizen parent.
that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens:
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The fact that they wrote that they “shall be considered as”
clearly indicates they are not without this.
This was repealed when they realized their error and the subsequent 1795 law removed the natural born citizen language.
“Both confirm that the original meaning of the phrase “natural born Citizen” includes persons born abroad who are citizens from birth based on the citizenship of a parent.”
“a parent”? You cannot find that. Anywhere.
The Naturalization Act of 1790 describes citizenship as descending from the father only. That even applied to naturalization laws until about 1930, when it was changed by the Supreme Court. Of course, the Supreme Court cannot amend the Constitution with their rulings, so natural born still stands.
You honestly think that the founders really believed that a man who was a citizen of another country, had the ability to engender natural born citizenship status to his son born in a foreign country? When those same founders wrote by law that citizenship descended only from the father?
Have you ever wondered, in the deepest recesses of your heart and mind, why Cruz will not release his citizenship verification documents? If it is only the documentation he used when he applied for his driver’s license in Texas.
The naturalization act of 1790 was repealed five years later. You left that part out!
A point germane to this discussion is that Barry never claimed to be a natural born citizen of the U.S. He claimed, on his own website, Stopthesmears.com, to have been born "a subject of the British Commonwealth", "by the British Nationality act of 1948. Barry told us, honestly and precisely, that he was "native-born", which, in the language of our first "Uniform Rule of Naturalization", the 14th Amendment; native-born in the 14th Amendment refers to anyone born on our sovereign soil. Barry continued his description with "citizen" - "I am a native-born citizen of the U.S.". While there might be questions about his alien father's jurisdiction while in the U.S. on a student visa, U.S. code based upon the 14th Amendment passed in the 20th century made him a citizen because his mother was a citizen.
Ted Cruz' was not born on our soil. But Barry, having the same constitutional law professor as Ted, had the integrity never to claim natural born citizenship for himself. Were Ted the "constitutional conservative" he claims to be, he never would have earned the title "hypocrite", meaning liar, used by Larry Tribe to describe his "brilliant" "originalist" student in the January 11, 2016 Boston Globe.
To see further hypocrisy on this very issue read for yourselves the excellent description of "Conservative" and "Originalist" in Mark Levin's Liberty and Tyranny, "On The Constitution", p36. Levin, now best known for his non-stop infomercial for Ted, says: "The Conservative is an orgiginalist, for he believes that much like a contract, The Constitution sets forth certain terms and conditions that hold the same meaning today as they did yesterday and should tomorrow." ..."If the Constitution's meaning can be erased or rewritten and the Framers' intensions ignored, it ceases to be a a constitution but is instead a concoction of political expedients that serve the contemporary policy agendas of the few who are entrusted with public authority to preserve it".
Mark continues with a quotation of James Madison' which clarified for this writer the reasoning behind the framer's explicit omission of term definitions in the Constitution. "If the meaning of the text be sought in the changeable meaning of the the words composing it, it is evident that the shapes and attributes of the Government must partake of the changes to which the words and phrases of all living languages are constantly subject." Mark continued "To say that the Constitution is a "living and breathing document" is to give license to arbitrary and lawless activism." Mark, who now cites honest "living and breathing document" proponent Larry Tribe, who just happened to skip the nullification of the 1790 Naturalization Act in his letter the Senate Judiciary Committee Hearings on SR 511, the Obama/Clinton/McCaskill resolution to declare John McCain a natural born citizen. Levine used Tribe's citation of a dead law, which could not have had effect anyway since Congress cannot amend or interpret Supreme Court decisions, but had already been changed in 1795 by Madison and Washington. Larry Tribe and Barack didn't lie. They are admitted "living and breathing" constitutional progressives. Ted, the self-proclaimed "conservative", now reinterprets the Constitution with former originalist Levin. Could large remainder purchases of Levin's books have anything to do with it? Could future legal work for Landmark Legal Foundation, contracts certainly controlled by GOP elites be turning Mark into a believer in a "living Constitution"?
As Mark might have said seven or eight years ago, read original sources. Here is just a taste, for which I thank RXSID; whoever he is, he is clearly a scholar, and pointed out this work as we at FR explored Obama's eligibility - or not. From Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, "Of Constitutions":
"if there is any Government where prerogatives might, with apparent safety be entrusted to any individual, it is in the federal Government of America. The president of the United States of America is elected only for four years. He is not only responsible in the general sense of the word, but a particular mode is laid down in the Constitution for trying him. He cannot be elected under thirty-five years of age; and he must be a native of the country."
"The presidency in America (or, as it is sometimes called, the executive) is the only office from which a foreigner is excluded, and in England it is the only one to which he is admitted. A foreigner cannot be a member of parliament, but he may be what is called a King. If there is any reason for excluding foreigners it ought to be from those offices where mischief can be most acted, and where by uniting every bias of interest and attachment, the trust is best secured."There is much more brilliance in Paine's work, by which most of today's political analysis pales. in this chapter. When Paine said "...must be a native of the country", he was using American common-law, cited and confirmed in Minor v. Happersett, used in Supreme Court cases from the 1790s until at least 1939, cited in Perkins v. Elg. Until the 14th Amendment's many derivative construction, without applications for naturalization, both Obama and Cruz would have been born aliens or foreigners. Wong Kim Ark, born to parents on our soil was made a citizen at birth by the Supreme Court in 1898, but never a natural born citizen, explicitly stated by Gray in the decision. Bot Wong Kim was born on our soil, to parents who had clearly accepted U.S. jurisdiction. China forbade repudiation of citizenship, but his parents were registered "domiciled" residents.