[Vision2020] Natural Born Citizen: Evasion You Can Believe In

[Andreas Schou]

> I do not have access to Westlaw or a similar search engine to confirm
> the exact definition of "natural born citizen" as it applies to this
> context and you will search Google in vain. But the argument as I
> understand it is that Obama's Kenyan citizenship combined with his US
> citizenship made him a "dual citizen" — the exact worst-case scenario
> that the founding fathers had in mind when they mandated that only a
> "natural born citizen" could hold the office of POTUS.

NW --

Each of the Founding Fathers (indeed, every president born before
1776) had exactly the same status as Obama: born with British
citizenship due to colonial status, lost citizenship when the colonial
status expired. That's pretty much it. Frankly, the same sort of
inadvertent dual citizenship can arise whenever a person with a parent
with jus sanguinus citizenship of another nation has a child with a US
citizen or on US soil. Such dual citizenship frequently cannot be
easily disclaimed.

Incidentally, you won't find the term "natural born citizen" on
Westlaw. The term has never been litigated. The majority of legal
scholars believe it to mean "having possessed US citizenship since
birth," or, in other words, "not a naturalized US citizen."

-- ACS