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

[Donovan Arnold]

The Senate had to pass a law to declare John McCain a Natural Born Citizen who was born abroad. 
 
It is true Natural Born Citizen has not been litigated. However, the law is pretty precise as to what it means. Both McCain and Obama are natural born citizens according to current federal law. 
 
My father was born on a US military base out of the country, as was McCain. But a US military base is considered US soil. 
 
I believe it was Martian Van Buren that was the first President that was born in United States. All prior presidents were born on British soil. 
 
If I were a McCain supporter I would not be bringing up the issue of natural born citizenship considering that it took an act from Congress, that could still technically be challenged by the courts, that McCain is a natural born citizen. I'm not sure if Congress has the Constitutional Authority to change or define the term "Natural Born Citizen" to its choosing, to fit one of their own so he can run for President. I am however, fairly certain that Hawaii is on US soil long before the birth of Obama. 
 
Best Regards,
 
Donovan

--- On Tue, 10/7/08, Andreas Schou <ophite at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Andreas Schou <ophite at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Natural Born Citizen: Evasion You Can Believe In
To: "No Weatherman" <no.weatherman at gmail.com>
Cc: vision2020 at moscow.com
Date: Tuesday, October 7, 2008, 6:35 PM

> 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

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