For the Founders, only the children of citizens are themselves “natural born citizens.”
Who shall be considered natural-born citizens? The term “natural born citizen” first appears in Article II, Section 1, and Amendment XII of the Constitution. For the Framers to have used such a term without explanation means there must have been a commonly understood, contemporary definition—and, in fact, there was. This definition can be found in Book 1, Sections 212-217, of “Law of Nations,” by the Franco-Swiss political philosopher, Emerich de Vattel, and first published in 1758.
§212. Citizens and natives. The citizens are the members of the civil society: bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens. As the society cannot exist and perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights ... I say, that, in order to be of the country, it is necessary that a person be born of a father who is a citizen; for if he is born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of his birth, and not his country.
§213. Inhabitants. The inhabitants, as distinguished from citizens, are foreigners, who are permitted to settle and stay in the country.
There is no doubt that the Framers were aware of this work, cited it, and relied on many of its concepts and terms. How do we know all this? Because the Framers told us so in their writings. Benjamin Franklin wrote this to Charles Dumas on December 9, 1775.
I am much obliged by the kind present you have made us of your edition of Vattel. It came to us in good season, when the circumstances of a rising state make it necessary frequently to consult the law of nations. Accordingly, that copy which I kept, (after depositing one in our own public library here, and sending the other to the college of Massachusetts Bay, as you directed) has been continually in the hands of the members of our congress, now sitting, who are much pleased with your notes and preface, and have entertained a high and just esteem for their author.
This means that the Framers were well aware of de Vattel’s work fully 12 years before the Constitutional Convention. Franklin himself was a member of both Continental Congresses and the Constitutional Convention.
When George Washington died, his list of overdue library books included a copy of The Law of Nations.
If you want more evidence that the Framers were aware of de Vattel’s definition of natural born citizenship, look at the stated reason for imposing this qualification on the office of President, taken from a letter John Jay wroteto George Washington on July 25, 1787:
Permit me to hint, whether it would not be wise & seasonable to provide a strong check to the admission of Foreigners into the administration of our national Government, and to declare expressly that the Command in chief of the American army shall not be given to, nor devolved on, any but a natural born Citizen.
Clearly, the object of the “natural born citizen” qualification was to exclude from the Presidency, as much as possible, foreigners, dual citizens, and those with strong foreign sympathies. de Vattel’s definition exactly satisfies this goal, and it is logical to infer that the Framers used the term because it best expressed their intentions.
Anyone who tells you the Framers were ignorant of de Vattel’s work or his definition of natural born citizenship is simply mistaken or worse.
In the years since the Framers’ time, and particularly since the ill-conceived 1898 decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark (another misstep of the same Court that decided the Plessy v. Ferguson segregation case in 1896), the waters surrounding natural-born citizenship have muddled. What really muddied the waters was the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause.
The authors of that text never mentioned natural-born citizenship or the qualifications for the presidency during its ratification debates, making it clear that the amendment was not intended to change any of that. The intent and debate surrounding birthright citizenship are topics worthy of their own discussion and will not be addressed here.
By 1875, the 14th Amendment had already influenced perceptions of who was a natural-born citizen. This can be seen in 1875’s Minor v. Happersett, in which Chief Justice Morrison Waite wrote,
The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners. Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first. (Emphasis mine.)
Notice that Waite all but literally quoted de Vattel, but added the portion in bold, which neither appeared in de Vattel nor does it agree with the Framers’ goal to exclude foreign influence from the Presidency.
Wong Kim Ark, as noted, confused things. In it, SCOTUS found that Wong Kim Ark, by virtue of birth to immigrant parents on U.S. soil, was by birthright a U.S. citizen despite neither of his parents possessing such citizenship; in essence, the now-controversial “jus soli” birthright citizenship.
Today, a great many, if not most Americans, have come to believe that birth on U.S. soil, regardless of parentage, is natural born citizenship. Clearly, persons of this description are not isolated from foreign influence as the Framers had clearly desired. Therefore, they cannot be the natural-born citizens the Framers envisioned.
It is worth noting that if we apply the tests of Wong Kim Ark to Kamala Harris, she does not even qualify as a U.S. citizen, much less a natural-born citizen. Note what the case requires:
The Supreme Court held that citizenship as prescribed in the Fourteenth Amendment extends to U.S.-born children of foreign subjects or citizens who, at the time of the child’s birth, are permanent residents and are carrying on business in the United States. (Emphasis mine.)
Kamala Harris’s parents were not lawful permanent residents at the time of her birth, but were present on academic visitor visas.
It should be clear from these facts that, owing to their foreign parentage and upbringing, neither Barack Obama nor Kamala Harris was, or is, qualified for the offices of President and Vice President, since neither is a natural-born citizen of the United States as the Framers understood that term. Since a significant part of our judiciary, Congress, and Executive Branch have been unable to discern this truth, we require a Constitutional Amendment to clarify the meaning of the term, ‘natural born citizen.’
Proposed Amendment XXIX
“No person but born of two citizen parents permanently residing in the United States is a natural born citizen of the United States.”