Ted Cruz is not eligible to be president.

[hughee99]

75. With all due respect, the writer in the OP link was suggesting that they know what the founders

really meant at the time. The Act of 1790 gives more insight to their opinions at the time than one can glean from a single English jurist or a single statement from James Madison (who incidentally was in congress at the time this was passed).

If the acts of 1795 (or 1798, or 1802) had more to say on the issue of being "natural born" then you'd certainly have an argument that the 1790 meaning is NOT what the founders intended, but as they're silent on the issue, I don't know how anyone could draw that conclusion.

If you want to know where I could tell for sure that the writer was talking out of their ass, it was this part.

"The debates on the matter reveal that the congressmen were aware that such children were not citizens and had to be naturalized; hence, Congress enacted a statute to provide for them. Moreover, that statute did not say the children were natural born, only that they should “be considered as” such. Finally, as soon as Madison, then a member of Congress, was assigned to redraft the statute in 1795, he deleted the phrase “natural born,” and it has never reappeared in a naturalization statute."

If Madison was so concerned about who is "natural born" and there was consensus on the issue, why didn't he clarify this matter at the time instead of removing it entirely and leaving ambiguity?

Of course, the part that really makes it clear is "that statute did not say the children were natural born, only that they should “be considered as” such". I think that is perhaps the weakest logic I've ever heard to dismiss an inconvenient point.