Qualifications for President and the “Natural Born” Citizenship Eligibility Requirement
Every person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, becomes at once a citizen of the United States, and needs no naturalization. A person born out of the jurisdiction of the United States can only become a citizen by being naturalized, either by treaty, as in the case of annexation of foreign territory, or by authority of Congress, exercised either by declaring certain classes of persons to be citizens, as in the enactments conferring citizenship upon foreign-born children of citizens, or by enabling foreigners individually to become citizens by proceedings in the judicial tribunals, as in the ordinary provisions of the naturalization acts.[1]
Under such argument, a person who is born of American parents abroad, although clearly a “citizen” of the United States by law, is one who is not a citizen by virtue of being “born… in” the United States,[2] and must, therefore, be one of those citizens who has been “naturalized” by the operation of law, even though such naturalization was “automatic” at birth. It is therefore argued that such citizen should not be considered a “natural born” citizen, but rather a “naturalized” citizen who is not eligible for the Presidency. Some earlier federal cases had, in fact, specifically held that a person who was born abroad of a father who was a naturalized American citizen, and who therefore was a citizen of the United States by virtue of a statutory provision, was himself a “naturalized” American citizen. In Zimmer v. Acheson, the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit found that the appellant, who had been born in Germany to a father who had been a naturalized U.S. citizen, was himself a “naturalized” citizen who could be expatriated under the provisions and requirements of the then-existing federal law:
There are only two classes of citizens of the United States, native-born citizens and naturalized citizens; and a citizen who did not acquire that status by birth in the United States is a naturalized citizen.
Revised Statutes §1993, in force at the time of the birth of Harry Ward Zimmer [appellant], provided: “All children heretofore born or hereafter born out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States, whose fathers were or may be at the time of their birth citizens thereof, are declared to be citizens of the United States; but the rights of citizenship shall not descend to children whose fathers never resided in the United States.”
If Werner Herman Zimmer [the appellant’s father], by virtue of his naturalization on October 30, 1896, was a citizen of the United States on August 9, 1905, the date of the birth of Harry Ward Zimmer, then the latter, at the time of his birth, became a citizen of the United States by virtue of the foregoing statute, but his status as a citizen was that of a naturalized citizen and not a native-born citizen.[3]
Those who support a broader, more inclusive reading of the Constitution to include as “natural born” citizens those born abroad to U.S. citizen-parents, note that these earlier decisions were
- ↑ 169 U.S. at 702–703. Emphasis added.
- ↑ See, e.g., “Insular cases” where the Supreme Court, in another context, found that the phrase “within the United States” means within the geographical limits of the states and the District of Columbia, and in those territories under the jurisdiction of the United States only if they have been “incorporated” into the United States. Downes v. Bidwell, 182 U.S. 244, 250–251 (1901); Balzac v. Porto Rico, 258 U.S. 298, 304–305 (1922). In Rabang et al. v. Immigration and Naturalization Service, 35 F.3d 1449 (9th Cir. 1994),), cert. denied, sub nom. Sanidad v. INS, 515 U.S. 1130 (1995), the Court of Appeals found that those born in the Philippines, at the time it was a United States possession, were not citizens at birth merely because of their place of birth since they were not born “in” the geographic United States, regardless of the exercise of American jurisdiction over the territory.
- ↑ Zimmer v. Acheson, 191 F.2d 209 (10th Cir. 1951). See similar finding in Schaufus v. Attorney General of the United States, 45 F. Supp. 61, 66–67 (D.Md. 1942).
