Posted on 04/24/2011 8:22:20 PM PDT by impimp
I would say it might make a difference whether a natural born citizen eligible under Irish law to obtain an Irish passport actually does so or not. And I agree it would be eyebrow raising and possibly a political liability if he did. I don't think it would be disqualifying. However, if the person never exercises the privilege, then his Irish passport eligibility would merely be an interesting biographical detail.
Before 2008, I didn't think we'd ever elect an anti-American to the highest office in the land. We might as well have elected Billy Ayers, who is natural born beyond question and a better writer, to boot.
This was also demonstrated when a Governor was removed from office for ineligibility
***I’m not familiar with that episode in history. Who was the governor and when did it happen? It could be instructive.
Birtherism is a waste of time!
***Not really. Basically, for $10, Obama could make it all go away. Instead he’s dropped $2M to fight it. That’s 7 figures worth of political leverage. No other issue has that much leverage. That’s why a bimbo like Trump can wave his arms about it and end up with the lead in the presidential polls a few weeks later. That is no waste of time.
A standard birther canard, unsupported by any facts.
Obama spent a total of $720m on his campaign. Only about $1.2m of that was for legal services. That's 17 cents per thousand dollars of expenditure! On all matters, combined! What part of that $1.2m was for birther defense?
The fact is, the courts have uniformly brushed off birther lawsuits. Thus, Obama has simply not needed to spend any significant sum defending against them.
As of now, Obama's Chicago community organizer instincts inform him there is greater return in stonewalling on the issue. Makes those rascally Republicans look like a bunch of crazy whackos, don't you know! He'll produce his BC when and if the time seems right, when the risk of stonewalling exceeds the reward, when independents who might actually vote for him start asking questions.
Yeah, and the lawyers who are working on defending certifigate are working for free. bull shiite.
It is just like so many other stnadards of behavior and conduct the Democrats are trying to bury and erase. Obama and/or his supporters keep trying to foist the Hawaiian Certification of Live Birth (short-form transcript) on the public as the only document the State of Hawaii can provide as a birth certificate for Obama to present to the public. This argument of theirs has to be one of the most insulting and ridiculous excuses ever used by Obama and the Democrats supporting him.
The Certification of Live Birth (short-form transcript) is a computer generated form that did not become available until 2000-2001. When Obama had to present a birth certificate for the numerous routine purposes before the year 2000, he had to do so using the Hawaiian Certificate of Live Birth (the long-form original birth certificate) because the Certification of Live Birth (short-form transcript) did not yet exist.
Obama wrote in his book/s that he had his birth certificate tucked away in a book. The Certification of Live Birth (short-form transcript) did not yet exist, so it had to be his Certificate of Live Birth (the long-form original birth certificate) in that book. Yet, Obama and his supporters are now trying to say he cannot produce the same document he wrote about in his book.
Obama must have used his Hawaiian Certificate of Live Birth (the long-form original birth certificate) on all of the other occasions before 2000-2001 when he was called upon to produce one to enter schools, apply for his license to practice law before he was disbarred or compelled to surrender his law license, and to apply for his U.S. Passport. It is fair to presume he should still have the Hawaiian Certificate of Live Birth (the long-form original birth certificate) he used on those occasions.
Then there is the fairy tale or blatant lie the Hawaii Department of Health, Obama, and his supporters are broadcasting, claiming the Hawaiian Certificate of Live Birth (the long-form original birth certificate) is not available even to Obama because the Hawaiian Certification of Live Birth (short-form transcript) was and is the only form of birth certificate provided by Hawaii. Up until very recently, other people were requesting their Certificate of Live Birth (the long-form original birth certificate) and receiving it, and not the Hawaiian Certification of Live Birth (short-form transcript). When the blogosphere posted images of these long-form documents proving the claim to be a lie and a fraud, the Hawaii Department of Health suddenly began to refuse requests for the Certificate of Live Birth (the long-form original birth certificate) in an apparent attempt to protect Obama by giving the false impression the Certificate of Live Birth (the long-form original birth certificate) was not available to him before the most recent twelve months.
So, this Department of State representation that dual citizenship is supposed to be recognized by the U.S. Government is just another part of the scheme to undermine the fundamental value of U.S. citizenship, the electoral system and U.S. citizens’ votes, and the duty of allegiance and loyalty to the other citizens of the United States. It is another subversion of the Constitution by rewriting history and the Federal regulations.
That is simply not true. It indeed used to be the case in the US that you couldn't hold dual citizenship (except in certain cases if you had dual citizenship from birth or childhood, in which case some Supreme Court rulings -- Perkins v. Elg (1939), Mandoli v. Acheson (1952), and Kawakita v. U.S. (1952) -- permitted you to keep both). However, most of the laws forbidding dual citizenship were struck down by the US Supreme Court in two cases: a 1967 decision, Afroyim v. Rusk, as well as a second ruling in 1980, Vance v. Terrazas.
I worked for the State Department for 28 years. The rules on dual citizenship have been in place for some time as the cited SCOTUS decisions indicate.
So, this Department of State representation that dual citizenship is supposed to be recognized by the U.S. Government is just another part of the scheme to undermine the fundamental value of U.S. citizenship, the electoral system and U.S. citizens’ votes, and the duty of allegiance and loyalty to the other citizens of the United States. It is another subversion of the Constitution by rewriting history and the Federal regulations.
The State Department does not and cannot act unilaterally. It follows US law. The Constitution says nothing explicitly about dual citizenship at all. Indeed, in its 1967 ruling in Afroyim v. Rusk, the Supreme Court used an argument derived from the 14th Amendment to the Constitution to affirm a right to dual citizenship.
It is interesting to note that Israel's "Law of Return" (under which any Jew may immigrate to and become a citizen of Israel) confers Israeli citizenship automatically, without the immigrant having to apply for it, attend any ceremony, or swear any oath of allegiance. The Israeli law may originally have been written this way to encourage American Jews to move to Israel; they could, in theory, argue that they had not explicitly requested Israeli citizenship and were thus still entitled to keep their US citizenship. (Note that Mr. Afroyim, subject of Afroyim v. Rusk, was alleged to have lost his US citizenship, not because he had become an Israeli citizen, but because he had voted in an Israeli election.)
Then it is a pity you failed to read your own organization's website which used to be very explicit about making the distinction between taking no action against a person claiming dual citizenship versus not recognizing dual citizenship and dual allegiance, with the usual historical exceptions of course. If you worked for the State Department, then you should know better and be acquainted with the problems which confronted candidates for dual citizenship.
I know very well about people claiming dual citizenship, having assisted friends and family having members of their families who had to deal with dual citizenship problems. I did not just wake up one morning and decide to invent the notion that the U.S. Government did not recognize dual citizenship. I obtained the information directly from the Department of State website which carefully described the difference between the court cases restraining enforcement of laws against dual citizenship, while warning readers and candidates for dual citizenship that the U.S. Government did not recognize dual citizenship. Evidently, you are joining with the Obama Administration in trying to consign the former disapproval of dual citizenship to the memory hole and pretend it did not exist when in fact it did exist not so long ago.
The prohibition against dual citizenship is rooted in customs that are thousands of years old. It is based upon the concept of determining to which community does a person and/or the person's family owe loyalty, allegiance, and support of the community in times of peace and belligerency. Every time there is an attempt to divide allegiance and thereby divide loyalties, the person and/or the community suffer harm when the loyalty is betrayed and abused. Consequently, it is very much a valid and reasonable issue for concern by all members of a community. It is a topic of debate the Democrats wish to suppress and bury, which they have accomplished to great degree by repealing and/or rendering ineffective former laws regarding sedition, treason, and a variety of other laws which they have been alleged to violate so often.
SCOTUS ruled in the cases I cited to you that the US recognizes dual citizenship. It is the law of the land and has been for more than 30 years. The State Department implements and enforces the laws, not make them.
I know very well about people claiming dual citizenship, having assisted friends and family having members of their families who had to deal with dual citizenship problems.
I have firsthand knowledge of the issue professionally and personally. I have issued passports. My wife is an immigrant and naturalized citizen and my daughter was born overseas.
I obtained the information directly from the Department of State website which carefully described the difference between the court cases restraining enforcement of laws against dual citizenship, while warning readers and candidates for dual citizenship that the U.S. Government did not recognize dual citizenship. Evidently, you are joining with the Obama Administration in trying to consign the former disapproval of dual citizenship to the memory hole and pretend it did not exist when in fact it did exist not so long ago.
The US did not always recognize dual citizenship. I provided you with the legal cases that changed the laws on dual citizenship. Facts are stubborn things. What started this exchange was your statement that the US does not recognize dual citizenship. It does and has been doing so for decades.
I don't agree with the concept of dual citizenship, but it is the law of the land. Much of it stems from Israel's law of return that makes any Jew eligible to be a citizen of the state of Israel--a result of the Holocaust and the establishment of the country. Once you allow Jews to hold dual citizenship, it is very difficult to deny it to others from different countries. And SCOTUS affirmed that it is constitutional. It may take a constitutional amendment to change it.
It is a given that the Democrats are moving Heaven and Earth in Congress, the Federal judiciary, and the executive administrations to change and/or eliminate the very concept of nationhood and citizenship. There are even some members of the Obama Administration and previous administrations who are publicly proposing a North American Union in preparation for the fantasy of a One World Government. Removing the distinction of citizenship and allegiance to a nation are necessary steps towards achieving such goals. That does not mean U.S. Citizens must agree to surrendering their present sovereignty over the personal and public affairs by delegating and ceding them to these international super-governments and their spectacularly corrupt bureaucrats. If push comes to shove, the Democrats and their socialist-communist members may provoke a response in the form of new Constitutional amendments or a Constitutional Convention which even the most corrupt members of the Congress, Supreme Court, and Executive administration will find difficult to ignore and subvert without being impeached and/or prosecuted, no matter what political party they profess to represent.
As for the legality of dual citizenship, there is a huge difference between statutory law and the decisions of SCOTUS interpreting or misinterpreting the Constitution, international law, and natural law. The Obama Administration may ultimately succeed in provoking a response which will settle the dual citizenship and a variety of immigrations issues contrary to their intended goals.
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