Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri proposed legislation on the Senate floor this week that would declare that any child born abroad to U.S. citizens serving in the United States military would be considered a “natural-born citizen” and therefore eligible to be elected President of the United States. I find Senator’s McCaskill’s intentions to protect the rights of children of American military families commendable and also admire the Senator, a Democrat, for proposing legislation whose first beneficiary would be Senator John McCain, a Republican. However, I think her proposal as currently formulated is misguided and needs modification.
As I wrote in a recent blog post, it is clear that the original New York Times article and most people who have commented about it on TV and in newspapers have misconstrued the term “natural born citizen” as having something to do with where a person is born. Instead, I argued that “natural born” is related to “naturalization” which is the process by which someone who is not born a citizen becomes one; this suggests a much more likely interpretation of “natural born citizen”, namely a person born a U.S. citizen. Under this interpretation, a child of military personnel born abroad the way Senator McCain was would be a “natural born citizen” and therefore eligible to be elected President. But so would all other children of U.S. citizens born abroad.
The problems with Senator McCaskill’s proposal are that it would adopt an incorrect interpretation of “natural born” into U.S. law and could actually deprive some American citizens born abroad of the right to become President. It would probably also violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Any new legislation aimed at clarifying the Constitution’s meaning of “natural born citizen” should be sure to do so in a manner that is as inclusive as possible, giving all U.S. citizens born abroad the same right.
It’s worth noting that the first Congress enacted a citizenship law (Act of March 26, 1790, Chapter 3, Section 1, Statute 104) that stated “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.” This gives clear evidence that the framers of the Constitution, some of whom served in the first Congress, understood “natural born citizens” to be those people who were born U.S. citizens regardless of where they were born. If the above statute is still in effect, then new legislation might not really be required to clarify this issue.
Logical and True 