With this odd fellow we elected President has come discussion about the Constitutional requirements for being President, and in particular that pesky little phrase “natural born citizen”. There are some very long (and some long-winded) discussions about that this means. I personally think the thing is being over analyzed.
I hit the Concise Oxford English Dictionary for the “old meaning” of the term, and it provided a very simple definition: “having a position by birth”, so “natural born citizen” means being a citizen at birth. There’s nothing new here, and indeed this is what is usually understood by the term. If you look at all the uses of “natural born”, it means “born with” some characteristic, e.g. natural-born storyteller, natural-born swimmer, natural-born athlete, natural-born mathematician, natural-born musician, and on and one. A natural born citizen is just someone born with the quality of being a citizen.
At first blush, this would seem to be a slam dunk answer for Barack Obama’s natural born citizenship, since the fourteenth amendment defines: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside”. There’s no question in my mind that Barack Obama was born in the United States. Some quibble about the latter part: “subject to the jurisdiction thereof”. Keep in mind that now we are talking about citizenship in general, not the qualifications for President. Some argue that the children of non-citizens born in the United States should not be citizens because they are subject to the government of their parents, that they have divided jurisdiction. This non-citizenship for the children of non-citizens would be a big surprise to hundreds of thousands of Americans with US Birth Certificates and carrying US Passports, and to the US State Department and most of the population. However, the question of citizenship for the children of non-citizens was settled long ago by the United States Supreme Court in the case of United States v. Wong Kim Ark. Wong was born in the US, the child of two Chinese temporary workers. He tried to re-enter the country and was denied entry because he was not a citizen. The Supreme Court in a 6-2 vote declared that he was indeed a citizen. (more…)
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