Yeah, I have been thinking a lot about Puerto Rico lately, as have we all. They are US citizens, you know (although they pay no income tax).
But can they run for president, once they settle in the US mainland? You have to be a natural born citizen (any birther will tell you).
Here are the rules, according to this site.
Anyone born inside the United States *
Any Indian or Eskimo born in the United States, provided being a citizen of the U.S. does not impair the person’s status as a citizen of the tribe
Any one born outside the United States, both of whose parents are citizens of the U.S., as long as one parent has lived in the U.S.
Any one born outside the United States, if one parent is a citizen and lived in the U.S. for at least one year and the other parent is a U.S. national
Any one born in a U.S. possession, if one parent is a citizen and lived in the U.S. for at least one year
Any one found in the U.S. under the age of five, whose parentage cannot be determined, as long as proof of non-citizenship is not provided by age 21
Any one born outside the United States, if one parent is an alien and as long as the other parent is a citizen of the U.S. who lived in the U.S. for at least five years (with military and diplomatic service included in this time)
A final, historical condition: a person born before 5/24/1934 of an alien father and a U.S. citizen mother who has lived in the U.S.
Also:
In short, the answer is yes.
Do they actually have to move to the mainland, or can they maintain full PR residency?
You have to have been a resident of the United States for at least 14 years, but I don’t think you have to be a current resident.
The only issue a Puerto Rican might have is that the 14 year residency requirement “within the United States” would be a problem for someone who’d only lived in Puerto Rico. I don’t believe an unincorporated territory would be included in that. So they’d have to clock in 14 years in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, or Palmyra Atoll beforehand.
There’s another historical one. Anyone who was a citizen of the United States on June 21, 1788 was eligible to be elected President, regardless of where they were born.
Alexander Hamilton was probably the best known example of somebody who was covered by this. He could have run for President even though he was born in the British West Indies and didn’t come to America until he was a teenager.
What what what what ???
Last I looked the condition was a little more strict than that. I’m a US citizen who’s lived in the US for at least five years, but my kids aren’t natural citizens.
I suspect that web site is either loose or out of date ???
What condition? The full and complete definition of the citizenship needed to be president is “natural born citizen.” That’s it. The best understanding is that a “natural born citizen” is anyone who is a citizen by virtue of their birth, and that website gives what appear to be the current rules for citizenship at birth. Nationality law is not written in stone, though (in fact, the Supreme Court just overturned some of it a few days ago), and it might have been different when your children were born. (I think, in the past, only time spent in the USA after a certain age has counted for that particular rule. It came up in the Obama birther threads, when people would say that it didn’t matter if he was born in Kenya because his mother was American.)
What about, say, Korean children who are adopted by US citizens? I don’t even know what their birth certificate might say.
I have a friend–had a friend–who adopted one child from Thailand, one from Nepal, one from Arizona, and birthed one. I would think it was very unfair if two of them were excluded, since they are for all practical purposes all her children.
(I don’t even know how those birth certificates are handled. I’m adopted, and my birth cert says where and when I was born but has my adoptive parents’ names on it. There’s no way that I can tell to indicate they are not also my birth parents. I would assume that would be the case for any adopted child. But I don’t know. My birth certificate does not say it was amended or anything like that. Maybe there is a secret code.)
Can you say what is the rule that your children do not meet which means that they are not natural born citizens?
People who are born as citizens of other countries and adopted by American citizens aren’t themselves natural born citizens and can’t run for president.
Another wrinkle: You don’t even need to have been born a citizen, just be a citizen by virtue of the circumstances of your birth. As one prominent example, John McCain, due to a loophole in the laws at the time*, was not a US citizen at the time of his birth, but became one a few years later when the loophole was closed. But nobody at all claimed that he was ineligible to be President on those grounds.
*The laws made provision for babies born inside the territory of the US, and for babies born to citizens outside of the jurisdiction of the US, but the Panama Canal Zone was inside of the jurisdiction of the US, but outside of its territory.
How is PR not part of the US? You don’t have to be born in a State, just the United States, right? PR is not the former, but it is the latter. As far as I understand it, that is.
I believe the clause missing from the quote is “at the time of the child’s birth.” I am guessing that you became a US citizen after your children were born.
If that is not the case then I don’t know.
In short the answer is: there IS no short answer!
Territories/protectorates/nations which subsequently become States if the Union all have similar provisions also grant citizenship at birth to people born in those places and who are subject to U.S. jurisdiction:
Puerto Rico (8 USC Sec. 1402) - anyone born there on or after January 13, 1941 is automatically a citizen of the US.
But to become POTUS??
Mmmm… there’s a couple of issues…the US Constitution:
Section 1 of Article Two of the United States Constitution sets forth the eligibility requirements for serving as president of the United States, under clause 5 (emphasis added):
“No Person 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 to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”
(Obviously the problem here is the tendency of non-legally-educated American readers to go for whatever constitutional interpretation offers the loosest result or which facilitates what they believe to be a right …for example: 2nd Amendment rights to bear arms DO give an ordinary citizen the right to carry arms but this was framed in the context of imminent British/Native American invasion or attack and NOT designed to allow my nurse sister to hold and use an automatic weapon designed to kill tanks in 2017…,…so despite subsequent acts/Amendments which further define citizenship, this provision has not been changed or superceded and still throws up the “born-v-naturalised” question)
To make it even more confused…
The Twelfth Amendment states, “No person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.” The Fourteenth Amendment does not use the phrase natural-born citizen. It does provide, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
Under Article One, representatives and senators are required to be U.S. citizens, but there is no requirement that they be natural born.[10][11]
So the answer to the question about people born before statehood in a territory which SUBSEQUENTLY becomes a state being eligible to run for POTUS: they are not "natural born@ and so it would seem they are ineligible…but they are welcome to try and request the USC to decide once and for all, clearly, which is the correct answer (and the Supreme Court does not have a good record of rendering clear, yes-or-no answers).
In what sense would someone born in Puerto Rico not be a natural-born citizen? There’s no complication here.
Barry Goldwater was born in Arizona Territory, but nobody ever questioned his right to be President (citizenship wise)
Actually, I think people did question it at the time.
I was born in the Alaska Territory, and I could run.