Legal scholars Paul Clement and Neal Katyal wrote a short note for the Harvard Law Review last year on the meaning of the “natural-born” requirement. Their conclusion:
"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.” 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…
While the field of candidates for the next presidential election is still taking shape, at least one potential candidate, Senator Ted Cruz, was born in a Canadian hospital to a U.S. citizen mother. Despite the happenstance of a birth across the border, there is no question that Senator Cruz has been a citizen from birth and is thus a “natural born Citizen” within the meaning of the Constitution. Indeed, because his father had also been resident in the United States, Senator Cruz would have been a “natural born Citizen” even under the Naturalization Act of 1790."
If you want to insist that no one born outside the U.S. can be a “natural-born” citizen, okay, but that’s not in keeping with the original understanding per Katyal and Clement. If you want to insist that children born abroad can be “natural-born” citizens but only if bothparents are citizens, okay, but I’m not sure where that conclusion is coming from. It’s obviously not coming from the statute quoted above. |
