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I have a stake in this, of course.\u00a0 My youngest son was born in Germany.<\/p>\n
He meets the rules for citizenship<\/a> \u2014 that is, I an an American citizen and had lived in the US for the required minimum of five years including two after age 14 \u2014 and, in fact, has an American Consular Record of Birth as well as a German birth certificate.<\/p>\n Is he, in fact, a natural-born citizen?\u00a0 I generally tend to think the answer is \u201cyes\u201d \u2014 that is, that there are two types of citizen, and any citizen who never needed to be naturalized by virtue of having been a citizen at birth, is a natural-born citizen.<\/p>\n But I don\u2019t think this is a view for which there\u2019s a firm consensus.<\/p>\n In 2008, after all, we had the first \u201cnatural born citizen\u201d controversy.<\/p>\n You know: was John McCain a Natural Born Citizen?\u00a0 He was born overseas, to American-citizen parents.\u00a0 Specificially, the \u201coverseas\u201d was the Panama Canal Zone, at the time the \u201cproperty\u201d of the United States but not with the same status as a \u201cregular\u201d state, commonwealth, or territory.<\/p>\n FactCheck dot org said, at the time (February 25, 2008), \u201cduh, of course.\u201d<\/p>\n More precisely,<\/p>\n McCain is a natural-born citizen, even though he was not born within this country\u2019s borders, since his parents were citizens at the time of his birth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Citing 1790 Congressional legislation:<\/p>\n And 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But it wasn\u2019t actually that straightforward.<\/p>\n At about the same time, NBC News featured an in-depth article<\/a> on the question.<\/p>\n But is John McCain a natural born citizen? The Constitution does not define the term further, and legal scholars say the notes of the Constitution\u2019s drafters shed little light on what they meant. It seems clear only that the founders wanted to make certain that whoever was president would be loyal to the U.S. alone and not to some other country. But the term \u201cnatural born citizen,\u201d many scholars say, was not in common use at the time the Constitution was written.<\/p>\n Sen. McCain\u2019s supporters draw some comfort from a law passed in 1790 by the first Congress. It provided that the children of US citizens born outside the US \u201cshall be considered as natural born citizens.\u201d The law is no longer in effect, but it provides some guidance on what the founders had in mind at the time of the Constitution. . . .<\/p>\n In 1964, the Supreme Court seemed to say, without deciding, that \u201cnatural born\u201d meant born inside the United States. In an opinion on an unrelated issue, the court observed, \u201cThe rights of citizenship of the native born and of the naturalized person are of the same dignity and are coextensive. The only difference drawn by the Constitution is that only the \u2018natural born\u2019 citizen is eligible to be President.\u201d But that language is not legally binding, and the Supreme Court has never ruled on what \u201cnatural born\u201d means. . . .<\/p>\n Besides, many legal scholars say the Canal Zone never was sovereign U.S. territory. In a February 1978 speech to the nation on the Panama Canal Treaty, heavily vetted by government lawyers, President Carter said, \u201cWe have never had sovereignty over it. We have only had the right to use it. The US Supreme Court and previous American presidents have repeatedly acknowledged the sovereignty of Panama over the Canal Zone.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Much later, in 2016, the Washington Post<\/em> revisited the question<\/a>, reminding readers that in May of 2008, the Senate had passed a resolution stating that McCain was indeed a natural-born citizen, but that resolution was nonbinding and fairly useless to the wider question, stating only<\/a> that McCain himself was a natural born citizen, and justifying that statement both because his parents were American citizens and because his father was serving his country in the military.\u00a0 \u00a0Other defenses included the additional claim that the Canal Zone \u201ccounted\u201d as well.\u00a0 Piling on these justifications means that the issue was not, is indeed still not settled at all \u2014 is there a third class of citizens, those who were citizens at birth but not \u201cnatural born\u201d?\u00a0 And, if so, who are they?<\/p>\n Because, yes, there is a claim circulating<\/a> that Kamala Harris is not a natural-born citizen, not because her parents were immigrants (as the retellings generally claim<\/a>), but because they were not permanent residents at the time but only here on student visas.\u00a0 I had rambled about the question of birthright citizenship before<\/a> \u2014 in particular with respect to the question of birth tourism and whether the amendment could be interpreted, by its tenses, to require ongoing residence rather than merely presence on American soil at the time of birth.<\/p>\n And I\u2019m still inclined to think that, if ever there was a circumstance in which we could reasonably say, \u201cthe Founders didn\u2019t envision the circumstances we now find ourselves in,\u201d this is it.\u00a0 Illegal immigration?\u00a0 Student visas?\u00a0 Birth tourism?<\/p>\n But in the meantime, we find ourselves with no actual answer on the question of the definition of \u201cnatural born citizen.\u201d\u00a0 Should Congress define this by legislation, not merely in the form of a \u201cresolution\u201d but an explicit definition?\u00a0 Or does Congress even have the power to legislate an interpretation of the constitution?\u00a0 If they don\u2019t, then, yes, we need a constitutional amendment \u2014 and we shouldn\u2019t freak out that somehow amendments are sacred and holy and should never be contemplated except for the most serious of reasons.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s my text:<\/p>\n \u201cNatural-born citizen,\u201d for the purpose of eligibility for the presidency or other purposes, shall mean any individual who was defined a citizen at birth, that is, without the necessity of naturalization.<\/p>\n Any individual born within the borders of the United States, including its states, territories, and commonwealths, shall be defined a citizen at birth, provided that at least one parent was a citizen or a permanent resident as defined by law at the time of birth.\u00a0 Congress shall have the power to legislate other circumstances providing for automatic citizenship, and to define the citizenship provisions for geographical areas with other forms of association to the United States.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In other words:<\/p>\n The Constitution would define \u201cnatural-born citizen\u201d expansively.<\/p>\n Separately, the Constitution would set minimum standards for the definition of \u201ccitizen\u201d more generally speaking, but would enable Congress to expand the definition beyond this minimum.\u00a0 There should probably be a restriction that Congress can\u2019t take away citizenship from a whole group of people previously presumed to posses it, but I haven\u2019t attempted to write that in Constitution-ese.<\/p>\n And having said all that:<\/p>\n no, it isn\u2019t racist to discuss the topic.<\/strong><\/p>\n This is a longstanding issue which should proactively be resolved rather than, each time it comes up, putting up a fuss that it\u2019s somehow racist (or other \u201c-ist,\u201d e.g., anti-children-of-military-personnel) or partisan to raise the question.\u00a0 And the fact that we can\u2019t discuss and fix this demonstrates our brokenness as a country.<\/p>\n By Lewis W. Hine(Life time: 1874-1940) \u2013 Original publication: Photo-study Immediate source: Brooklyn Museum, Public Domain, https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/w\/index.php?curid=51292180\u00a0 The caption of the uncropped version says \u201clost baggage is the cause of their worried expressions\u201d which I find fascinating because it counters the narrative of \u201cimmigrants arrived with nothing other than the shirts on their backs.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have a stake in this, of course.\u00a0 My youngest son was born in Germany. He meets the rules for citizenship \u2014 that is, I an an American citizen and had lived in the US for the required minimum of five years including two after age 14 \u2014 and, in fact, has an American Consular […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[451,254],"class_list":["post-17381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-constitution","tag-natural-born-citizen"],"yoast_head":"\n