Jus sanguinis (Latin: right of blood) is a principle of nationality law by which citizenship is not determined by place of birth but by having one or both parents who are citizens of the state.  Children at birth may automatically be citizens if their parents have state citizenship or national identities of ethnic, cultural, or other origins.  Citizenship can also apply to children whose parents belong to a diaspora and were not themselves citizens of the state conferring citizenship.  This principle contrasts with jus soli.

Jus soli (Latin: right of the soil), commonly referred to as birthright citizenship, is the right of anyone born in the territory of a state to nationality or citizenship.  As an unconditional basis for citizenship, it is the predominant rule in the Americas, but is rare elsewhere.  Since the Twenty-seventh Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland was enacted in 2004, no European country grants citizenship based on unconditional jus soli.  

A person who becomes a U.S. citizen through naturalization is not considered a natural born citizen.  Consequently, naturalized U.S. citizens are not eligible to become President of the United States or Vice President of the United States, which would ordinarily be the case as established by the Presidential Succession Act.  

Some argue that the phrase “natural born citizen” describes a category of citizenship distinct from that described by the phrase “U.S. Citizen” in Article Two of the United States Constitution, and this was discussed during the constitutional convention of 1787.  While it is true that “natural born citizen” is not defined anywhere within the text of the Constitution and that the Constitution makes use of the phrase “citizen” and “natural born citizen,” Supreme Court decisions from United States v. Wong Kim Ark to the present have considered the distinction to be between natural-born and naturalized citizenship.

An April 2000 report by the Congressional Research Service, asserts that most constitutional scholars interpret the phrase “natural born citizen” as including citizens born outside the United States to parents who are U.S. citizens under the “natural born” requirement. 

In her 1988 article in the Yale Law Journal, Jill Pryor wrote, “It is well settled that ‘native-born’ citizens, those born in the United States, qualify as natural born.  It is also clear that persons born abroad of alien parents, who later become citizens by naturalization, do not.  But whether a person born abroad of American parents, or of one American and one alien parent, qualifies as natural born has never been resolved.”

Judge Pryor (she was nominated to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals by President Obama safely in office in 2012, and confirmed by the Senate in 2014 )is correct in one regard, “that a person born…of one American and one alien parent, qualifies as natural born has never been resolved,” presumably in a court of law.  That is because just as “persons born abroad of alien parents, who later become citizens by naturalization” do not qualify as natural born, neither should a person born of one American and one alien parent, qualifiy as natural born.  This latter circumstance is the definition and the qualifications of a person having the rights of nationality in two countries, or dual citizenship.

On the issue of dual citizenship, based on the U.S. Department of State regulation on dual citizenship, the Supreme Court of the United States has stated that dual citizenship is a “status long recognized in the law” and that “a person may have and exercise rights of nationality in two countries and be subject to the responsibilities of both.  The mere fact he asserts the rights of one citizenship does not, without more, mean that he renounces the other”, Kawakita v. U.S., 343 U.S. 717 (1952).  In Schneider v. Rusk, 377 U.S. 163 (1964), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a naturalized U.S. citizen has the right to return to his native country and to resume his former citizenship, and also to remain a U.S. citizen even if he never returns to the United States.

The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) neither defines dual citizenship nor takes a position for it or against it.  There has been no prohibition against dual citizenship, but some provisions of the INA and earlier U.S. nationality laws were designed to reduce situations in which dual citizenship exists.  

Although the U.S. government does not endorse dual citizenship as a matter of policy, it recognizes the existence of dual citizenship and completely tolerates the maintenance of multiple citizenship by U.S. citizens.  In the past, claims of other countries on dual-national U.S. citizens sometimes placed them in situations where their obligations to one country were in conflict with the laws of the other.  

Barack Obama was born a dual national, with dual citizenship with rights of nationality in two countries.  As such, he may well have been disqualified as a natural born citizen and ineligible for the Office of the President of the United States, per Article Two of the United States Constitution. Senator Ted Cruz, aware of the hazards of dual citizenship, renounced any claim to Canadian citizenship owing to his birth there in the 2008 election cycle.  Barack Obama’s failure to do so in 2008 could well have been because he knew that the issue would never be aggressively pursued.

The media and Washington Democrats extensively colluded to interfere in the 2008 Presidential Election by supporting a likely ineligible candidate, one with obvious dual citizenship rights of nationality in two countries.  By ignoring his rights of dual citizenship, the media never fully vetted the U.S. constitutional qualifications of candidate Obama but rather redefined jus soli -- born in the United States -- as natural born.  It was on all the networks, therefore, it must have been the truth.

The media and Washington Democrats knew this was the critical issue of the election, that it should have been adjudicated in the courts, not on the nine o‘clock news or the front page of the Times or the Post.  Hundreds of Americans were maliciously branded as “racist” for questioning the obvious questionable credentials of the candidate and dual national Barack Obama. 

No matter how vigorous or successful the media was, racism wasn’t the problem in vetting candidate Obama.  It was a brilliant disinformation campaign waged by the real manipulators of the truth -- the media and Washington Democrats -- who influenced our 2008 election.  The media completely controlled the narrative and kept the issue out of the courts.  Senator McCain, who had standing to challenge in court, should have taken Senator Obama to the Supreme Court.

I can understand the angst and hatred by the media and Washington Democrats toward President Trump.  As the Russian collusion narrative disintegrates, Donald Trump is showing America just what liars the media are, that they are seasoned propagandists and masters of disinformation.  They are not acting in the best interests of America or Americans but their own self interests.