From the article:
There followed a lengthy story in which the Reaganesque Rubio, elected in 2009 from Florida and already touted as a 2012 vice presidential contender, fell back on an explanation that he’d been relying on family lore while solidifying his identity with Cuban-American voters.
How can he be a vice presidential contender when he is not a Natural Born Citizen as required by the Constitution? His parents were NOT citizens when he was born.
Marco Rubio was born here. In the good ole USA. He is a US citizen just like the anchor babies.
The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments.
Its Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship that overruled the Dred Scott v. Sandford ruling by the Supreme Court (1857) that held that blacks could not be citizens of the United States.[1]
Section 1 formally defines citizenship and protects a person's civil and political rights from being abridged or denied by any state. This represented the overruling of the Dred Scott decision's ruling that black people were not, and could not become, citizens of the United States or enjoy any of the privileges and immunities of citizenship.[2] The Civil Rights Act of 1866 had already granted U.S. citizenship to all persons born in the United States, as long as those persons were not subject to a foreign power; the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment added this principle into the Constitution to prevent the Supreme Court from ruling the Civil Rights Act of 1866 to be unconstitutional for lack of congressional authority to enact such a law and to prevent a future Congress from altering it by a mere majority vote.
This section was also in response to the Black Codes that southern states had passed in the wake of the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery in the United States.[3] The Black Codes attempted to return former slaves to something like their former condition by, among other things, restricting their movement, forcing them to enter into year-long labor contracts, prohibiting them from owning firearms, and by preventing them from suing or testifying in court.[4]
Finally, this section was in response to violence against black people within the southern states. A Joint Committee on Reconstruction found that only a Constitutional amendment could protect black people's rights and welfare within those states.[5]
There are varying interpretations of the original intent of Congress, based on statements made during the congressional debate over the amendment.[6][7] During the original debate over the amendment Senator Jacob M. Howard of Michigan—the author of the Citizenship Clause[8]—described the clause as having the same content, despite different wording, as the earlier Civil Rights Act of 1866, namely, that it excludes Native Americans who maintain their tribal ties and "persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers."[9] According to historian Glenn W. LaFantasie of Western Kentucky University, "A good number of his fellow senators supported his view of the citizenship clause."[8] Others also agreed that the children of ambassadors and foreign ministers were to be excluded.[10][11] However, concerning children born in the United States to parents who are not U.S. citizens (and not foreign diplomats), three Senators, including Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lyman Trumbull, the author of the Civil Rights Act, as well as President Andrew Johnson, asserted that both the Civil Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment would confer citizenship on them at birth, and no Senator offered a contrary opinion.[12][13][14]
To make it more clear. Children born to foreigners that are Ambassadors and ministers of their countries are citizens of their countries.
On the other hand children born to immigrants, who are not yet citizen and are not Diplomats and ministers of their countries are automatically US Citizen. Marco Rubio's parents were private citizen of Cuba and not diplomats or ministers