Professor stupidmonkey wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Professor stupidmonkey wrote:
Except it states "at least one" parent. It doesn't say two.
What is the "it" you are referring to?
Your quote, which stated:
Quote:
At one point, the Congressional Research Service - an arm of the Library of Congress that is supposed to provide authoritative but impartial research for elected members - advised that its analysts agreed with George Romney, according to a congressional source.
In a paper in November aimed at clarifying presidential eligibility, the Congressional Research Service declared that the practical, legal meaning of "natural born citizen" would "most likely include" not only anyone born on U.S. soil but anyone born overseas of at least one parent who was a U.S. citizen.
But I didn't go farther than that, for research.
Ah. Ok. It says "most likely include" and "at least one parent". Both of George Romney's parents were US citizens though, so he was even more clear.
And BTW, the wiggle room in "most likely include" regarding "at least one parent" is the case that applies to Obama, and not to Romney. As I've mentioned several times now. Romney was born to two US citizens who were living/working as missionaries in Mexico when he was born. The fact that he was born in Mexico was never in doubt, thus there was no need to see a birth certificate to prove anything. And in his case, since both his parents were US citizens, he was considered a US citizen. Yeah, the statement in the quote is awkward, but it's designed to be complete. Two parents who are US citizens is included in the set of "at least one parent who was a US citizen".
The wiggle room is the bit that I mentioned earlier, and which changed over time. It's the immigration law itself, specifically as it regards a person born to one US citizen and one foreign national. In that case, there's an age and residency requirement for the US citizen parent in order for the child to be a citizen at birth. Since Obama's mother failed to meet that requirement when he was born (she was too young, being only 18 at the time), she could not pass citizenship at birth to Obama by that statue. And thus, in Obama's case (but not in Romney's case, or McCain's case), the question of whether he was born on US soil was very important. The others were not born on US soil. We know they were not born on US soil. The issue of where they were born was not actually relevant to determining their status as natural born citizens, so there was no need to examine their full birth documentation.
There are multiple ways one can be considered a natural born citizen. Thus, there are different avenues to make that determination, depending on the specifics of the person in question. Both McCain and Romney were born to two US citizens. Thus, under US immigration law, they were automatically US citizens at birth, regardless of where they were born. Obama was born to one US citizen and one foreign national, and thus fell into a different category and required different documentation. Is that really so hard to understand?