My Less Than Humble Opinion

Article II of the Constitution

Article II of our Constitution defines the requirements for and the duties of the Presidency. Clause 5 defines the minimum eligibility requirements for the office of President of the United States.

5. No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President, neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

To the best of our knowledge, everyone who was “a citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution” has been dead for at least 150 years. Since then, the requirements for being President have been:

• Being a “natural born citizen”,
  
  
• Being at least 35 years old, and
  
  
• Living within the United States for at least 14 years.
  

The Constitution does not explicitly define “natural born citizen”. Many legal scholars believe that the Framers of the Constitution used the term in the sense that it was used in both British common and statute law. Common law considered you to be natural born if you were born in the country (jus soli citizenship). Statute law considered you to be natural born if either of your parents was a citizen (jus sanguinis citizenship).^[1]

I’m Confused …^[2]

I’m confused about what President Trump considers to be the source of his own status as a “natural born citizen”. His recent executive order attempting to eliminate Birthright Citizenship would seem to imply that he believes that jus sanguinis is the only valid “natural born citizenship”. (There are only two choices.)

On the other hand, President Trump was a vocal supporter of the Birtherism movement that opposed President Obama’s “natural born citizenship” on the basis of not being born in the United States.^[3] Even if Barack Obama had not been born in the United States, his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was a U.S. citizen … from a line of U.S. citizens extending back to our country’s founding.^[4] By President Trump’s own reasoning, bloodline (jus sanguinis) should have been sufficient to make President Obama a “natural born citizen”. (Again, there are only two choices.)

Which is it, Mr. President?

I will not contest your adherence to the Constitutional “natural born citizen” requirements for being President as defined in Article II by either location of birth or bloodline.

• You were born in the New York borough of Queens. That satisfies jus soli citizenship as clearly defined in the 14th Amendment.
  
  
• At least one of your parents was a U.S. citizens at the time of your birth.^[5] That satisfies jus sanguinis citizenship.
  

I’ve heard that Department of Justice lawyers are citing the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” in the 14th Amendment as a reason to deny it’s guarantee of citizenship to children born in the United States if their parents are “undocumented immigrants”. This is, at best, circular reasoning. Many who agree with the President’s executive order call the parents (and their children born in the U.S.) “illegal aliens”.^[6] The concept of illegality implies a violation of the laws of some jurisdiction. If one is not subject to a jurisdiction, one cannot violate it’s laws. Few people in the United States have Sovereign Immunity from the law. ^[7] Even fewer have Absolute Immunity. ^[8]

Whatever You Decide …

We the People of the United States are waiting for your decision, Mr. President.

Whichever version of “natural born” citizenship you choose, the other cannot be eliminated by presidential executive order.^[9]

Citizenship by being born within any of the United States, is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. The only way to change or eliminate any part of the Constitution and its amendments is with another amendment. Amending the Constitution requires a 2/3 vote of both the House and the Senate followed by ratification by 3/4 of the states.

Citizenship based upon the citizenship of one or both parents is embedded in the Immigration and Nationalization Act. The only way to change a law is through another law … passed by a majority of the members of the House and 60% of the Senate. Then, and only then, can the President sign it into law.

I suggest that you stop fooling around with executive orders and start working with Congress. It’s not the dramatic photo-op you like, but it’s the only way that works.

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If you have any comments or additional ideas, I encourage you to leave a reply in the comments section at the end of this article.

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Notes

[1]
Seven U.S. Presidents … Andrew Jackson, James Buchanan, Chester A. Arthur, Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump … have had one foreign-born parent.

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[2]
I’m sure that:

• MAGA Cultists,
  
  
• Those, of any party, who think “my party, right or wrong”,
  
  
• Those who believe that someone, like me, who is registered to vote without being a member of any party (usually known as “Independent”) is just plain un-American,
  

will agree that “I’m Confused”.

I suspect that some of my friends and family will think, “Yeah, so what else is new?” 😉

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[3]
President Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii on August 4, 1961. Hawaii was admitted as a state on August 21, 1959. Ergo, he has Birthright Citizenship.

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[4]
Because Barack Obama was President of the United States … and, perhaps, because he was relentlessly badgered by the “Birthers”, his genealogy is readily available on the internet. Starting with his mother, Stanley Ann Durham, I traced President Obama’s paternal ancestry back to his Great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, Samuel Dunham, who was born in Woodbridge, New Jersey in 1724. He died in 1824. Hence, he became U.S. citizen at the same moment that the United States became a country.

Here’s a chart of Stanley Ann Dunham’s paternal ancestors back to their first U.S. citizen, Samuel Dunham:

The red rectangles indicate the same person, Stanley Ann Dunham’s great-great-grandfather, Jacob Mackay Dunham. The person in the blue rectangle is her great-great-great-great-grandfather, Samuel Dunham … who became a U.S. citizen on June 21, 1788 when New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the Constitution and satisfied the requirements for it to become the law of the land as specified in Article VII. (FWIW, Rhode Island was the final state to ratify the Constitution on May 29, 1790.)

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[5]
President Trump’s father was the second member of his family born in the United States. (He had an older sister named Elizabeth who was also born in the U.S.) His father, the President’s grandfather, was born in the Palatinate (part of what is now Germany). He immigrated to the U.S. and became a naturalized citizen.

The President’s mother was born in the Outer Hebrides (part of Scotland). She had several family members already living in the United States. After she immigrated to the U.S. she lived with her sister for awhile and became a naturalized citizen.

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[6]
I find the term “illegal alien” to be offensive. To say that some behavior is illegal is means that the behavior is one that we agree should not exist. To say that a person is illegal implies that that person should not exist. Today (January 27, 2025), I heard Whoopi Goldberg, on “The View“, use the term “undocumented citizens” rather than “undocumented immigrants”. I’m not sure whether she used the term intentionally, but … for those undocumented people who have been here for several years, have never violated the law, hold jobs or run small businesses, pay their taxes (including Social Security withholding which they have no hope of collecting), and do everything else that good, upstanding citizens do … I like the term.

As for the term “alien”, the guy on the right is one of those … and, I’m not even sure that he’s “illegal”.

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[7]
These institutions, groups, and persons have Sovereign Immunity under the Constitution and U.S. Law:

• The federal government has sovereign immunity and may not be sued unless it has waived its immunity or consented to suit.
  
  States possess sovereign immunity and are therefore immune from being sued in federal court without their consent.
  
  
• Native American tribes enjoy immunity from suit—in federal, state, or tribal courts — unless they consent to suit, or unless the federal government abrogates that immunity.
  
  In general, individual members of the tribe do not have sovereign immunity, but … a tribal official acting in his or her official capacity, and within the scope of that authority, may have sovereign immunity. If the official exceeds the scope of the authority, he or she is subject to suit for those acts.
  
  
• The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) of 1976 establishes the limitations as to whether a foreign sovereign nation (or its political subdivisions, agencies, or instrumentalities) may be sued in U.S. courts — federal or state.
  
  The FSIA establishes specific procedures for service of process and attachment of property for proceedings against a Foreign State. It provides the exclusive basis and means to bring a lawsuit against a foreign sovereign in the United States.
  
  In international law, the prohibition against suing a foreign government is known as state immunity.

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[8]
These institutions, groups, and persons have Absolute Immunity under the Constitution and U.S. Law:

• Lawmakers when they are engaged in the legislative process;
  
  
• Judges when they are acting in their judicial capacity;
  
  
• Government prosecutors when they are making charging decisions;
  
  
• Executive officers when they are performing adjudicative functions;
  
  
• The President of the United States;
  
  
• Presidential aides who have shown that the functions of their office are so sensitive as to require absolute immunity and have shown that the act in question was in the performance of those functions;
  
  
• Witnesses testifying in court providing that their testimonies do not constitute perjury;
  
  
• Lawyers in certain circumstances related to fraud.
  
  

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[9]
To be more precise, neither can be eliminated by executive order LEGALLY. Contrary to what you seem to believe Mr. President, the Supreme Court did not decree you to be Caesar. Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justice Barrett have not always voted with Associate Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh.

You may also want to consider that, even if you were to succeed in placing a crown on your head by destroying the Constitution and close to 250 years of law, you will have done so with the help of your own personal Brutus.

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