Natural Born Citizens
February 13, 2016
Since Donald Trump is still pushing this line of attack, I
think I'll weigh in with my two-cents.
For context, I dug into this issue pretty heavily during the '08
campaign. I'm actually pretty frosted
that it's come up again, after I tried and failed spectacularly at having a satisfactory engagement with anyone, from any side, on the merits for or against. I was willing to be convinced, no matter what
the consequence and effect on my personal desires. So, in the absence of engagement
in discussion when it mattered in '08, I've just had to figure it out for
myself, and I'll state my findings, and position.
Also, to be fair to Donald Trump, he was virtually the only person in the public eye to
not give up the "debate", until a copy of Obama's birth documents
were posted (but he did not actually further the discussion of the salient
points of the debate).
Here's a summary of the issue: When the Constitution was written in 1787, a
clause was added for the qualifications for holding the office of the
President: "No Person except a
natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the
Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of
President;" There is no iron-clad
definition of Natural Born Citizen in the Constitution or supporting documents,
or this would not be an issue. So,
everyone's been left to scour antiquity for original intent, precedent, etc.
I thought I had encountered a clue as to the original intent of this clause when, in 2010, Kenya adopted a new constitution. It went
something like this: Under the Kenyan
Constitution, Barack Obama was considered to be a natural born citizen of
Kenya, since his father was Kenyan. That
is, he would be entitled to citizenship in Kenya; Kenya would not have to *decide* to admit him as a citizen, and he could be claimed to be a dual citizen of the
United States and Kenya. It struck me
that perhaps the concept of the clause was to prevent any possibility of foreign allegiance
of the President, and any entanglements such Dual Citizenship might cause. This would argue for the Natural Born clause
to be applied as "born of citizens who themselves were not dual citizens
(and maybe even could not claim natural citizenship from another country), in
the United States". This would
prevent any possibility of either the candidate or the foreign country from
making a claim of citizenship.
I've rejected this theory, because it relies completely on a
third party's determination about claims of citizenship. For example, Britain could decide to extend
natural citizenship to all descendants of it's former colonies, or some other
strange thing. The only thing that makes
sense is to rely on a criteria not controlled by another country.
This invalidates Trump's claim about birth place as the sole
criteria. As I discovered with Obama,
another country could still claim citizenship for you, for the most basic
reason that one of your parent's was from that country. The only thing that matters is whether or not
you can claim to have been born a citizen of the United States, regardless of
any other claims.
To that end, it is nonsensical to say that being born abroad
instead of at home to a legitimate citizen of the united states *does not
confer natural citizenship*. When we
travel to a foreign country, not a single person would assume that having a
child while in that country would deny that child the automatic and natural
rights of a citizen of our own country.
That would be as if to say that we cease to exist as citizens of the
United States once we cross the virtual boundary of the country.
My conclusion then is that anyone born to a U.S. Citizen is
a U.S. Citizen by birth. The location of
birth may also invoke arbitrary claims by other parties, but they are immaterial
to the fact that that child is a Natural Born Citizen. Furthermore, since it is a natural right, it
cannot be undone by paper work, or lack of paper work. We don't assume our natural rights (life,
liberty, etc.) are only in effect because of a document, they are in effect *by
nature*. If your paperwork is not *in
order* then it's a problem for the Bureaucracy, not for the natural citizen to
whom the Bureaucracy must answer.