If George Romney was a citizen at the time of Mitt Romney’s birth, ditto his mother, then Mitt Romney is an NBC regardless of the type of citizenship his father held (NBC, Statutory Citizen by birth or or naturalized).
I have never heard the claim made that George Romney was not a US citizen, and I doubt that any such claim is about to be made now.
Confession time - I am not a natural born citizen. One of my grand fathers was a Huguenot, arriving in this country around 1690.
Born in France, he fled to England after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and from there came to the U.S. I must be French. Oh, the shame of it all.
Mon Dieu!
At the time of the Constitutional Convention and the years shortly before 1787, the United Kingdom of Great Britain claimed that any person born as a subject of the British sovereign owed a permanent allegiance to the British sovereign for the person's entire life. Britain denied recognition that any person born a British subject could ever naturalize as a citizen of another state or swear allegiance to any other sovereign without committing treason against the British sovereign. This British claim was at odds against most of the laws and customs of Continental Europe, which did recognize some limited ablates to naturalize as a citizen with a foreign sovereign.
Revolutionary France was also in the midst of a tumult and redefinition of the rights of citizenship and the allegiance a citizens owed to the state.
The future first Chief Justice of the Supreme court of the United States considered it necessary to write a letter to George Washington suggesting that having any United States citizenship was not an adequate safeguard as a qualification to be the President and commander-in-chief of the American Army. He and others were concerned that a European sovereign or group of European nobility could very well attempt to promote a person still owing allegiance in part or whole to a foreign sovereign, and this person could then attempt to subordinate the United States and its citizens to the authority of the foreign sovereign who laid claim to an allegiance owed by the President and commander-in-chief. There were numerous precedents they had in mind including the Scottish succession. After wards, Mexico revolted against Spain and found its leader claiming to be an Emperor of Mexico, and the French attempted later to install Archduke Maximilian as yet another Emperor of Mexico. To avoid such risks, the Founding Fathers used the natural born citizen clause as a means of ensuring the only person who would qualify for eligibility to the Office of the President and Office of the Vice President was a person who at no time from the moment of birth to their inauguration in office ever owed allegiance to anyone other than the citizens of the United States who elected him.
Later years and events created a new problem. In 1787, a person could not possess dual citizenship, because it meant a person owed allegiance to more than one sovereign at a time. At that time, it was an act of treason to swear allegiance to a foreign sovereign without obtaining leave of your original sovereign to naturalize out of the preceding allegiance. The more recent court cases and statutory laws of foreign nations has created a conflict with dual and multiple citizenships and the divided allegiances and divided loyalties they create. With respect to the natural born citizen clause any attempt to claim a dual citizenship or a multiple citizenship immediately runs afoul of the Founding Fathers intent to deny eligibility to any person who ever owed allegiance to a foreign sovereign at birth or after birth.
Some people may attempt to claim that being a a child of two U.S. citizens confers U.S. citizenship upon the child and natural born citizenship as well. The problem with such a claim is the allegiance owed by the child at birth to the foreign sovereign of the state in which the child is born, if any.
In the case of George Romney, we do not know whether or not his father repudiated his U.S. citizenship and/or naturalized as a citizen of Mexico; or did the grandfather become a citizen of Mexico and then resume a claim of being a U.S. citizen without going through the legal process of naturalizing as a U.S. citizen? We don't know at this point whether or not the return to the United States was as a legitimate U.S. citizen or as an illegal immigrant.
If George Romney's father became a naturalized citizen of Mexico, then George Romney could have been born with Mexican citizenship and no U.S. citizenship at all despite claims to the contrary. If George Romney was an illegal Mexican immigrant, then Mitt Romney is the native born U.S. citizen son of an illegal Mexican born immigrant whose parents were former U.S. citizens.
Many people have been asking why the Republican Party has shown no desire to pursue Obama’s lack of eligibility to the Office of the President? Given the way in which the Republican Party elected another ineligible candidate, President Chester Arthur, and seeks to promote many more potentially ineligible candidates such as George Romney, Mitt Romney, Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio, and perhaps John McCain; the question should be why is anyone surprised?
A better question may be why do both political parties seem to be singularly incapable of promoting qualified candidates whose natural born ancestors are beyond question? As many people who perform family historical research or genealogical research know, about 10 percent of U.S. citizens are descendants of the original Mayflower colonists of 1620. Then there are more who are descendants of the Jamestown colonists of 1607-1620. These include many people who the descendants of the 17th Century slaves brought to these colonies and who earned their right to be free citizens in those colonies. Why then do these political parties find it necessary to snub the 100 percent born and raised U.S. citizens from the highest offices of our Federal Government? Why do these political parties go to such extremes to force these people born in foreign cultures into our government and usurp the powers our forefathers reserved to us and our posterity?
If George Romney was a citizen at the time of Mitt Romney’s birth, ditto his mother, then Mitt Romney is an NBC regardless of the type of citizenship his father held (NBC, Statutory Citizen by birth or or naturalized).
Totally agree, but due to daddy being foreign born, shouldn’t Mitt provide documentation as proof. If he’s NBC, wouldn’t that help in court of public opinion that he did things right vs Obama hiding his entire birth, father, place, citizenship etc.? Isn’t this what transparency is all about?
George Romney]s grandfather defected the United States.