Posted on 02/24/2015 7:07:49 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Sen. Ted Cruz is getting close to announcing his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination. The Texan is spending almost as much time in Iowa and New Hampshire as he does on Fox News; he's hired a staff and collected a long list of fiercely conservative supporters..
There's at least one hitch: Ted Cruz was born in Calgary, in the Canadian province of Alberta. His mother was a U.S. citizen, born in Delaware; his father, a Cuban refugee working in Canada's oil fields. Thanks to his mother, Cruz was a U.S. citizen at birth.
But that doesn't clear up a legal muddle that's as old as the Constitution: Is a U.S. citizen born abroad qualified to serve as president?
I don't agree with Cruz on most issues. He wants to repeal Obamacare, abolish the Internal Revenue Service and pass a constitutional amendment allowing states to outlaw gay marriage, just to take the top of his list. But I still hope he runs — because it's high time we established the right of Canadian-born Americans to serve as president.
Canadian Americans are perhaps our most underappreciated minority. Their contributions to U.S. culture range from hockey to comedy to, well, hockey. It's an impressive list: Wayne Gretzky, William Shatner, Lorne Michaels, Jim Carrey, Pamela Anderson, Alex Trebek. And now Ted Cruz.
At this point I should confess a personal stake: My oldest daughter was born in Toronto. Like Ted Cruz, she inherited U.S. citizenship through one of her parents. But we assured her that she could grow up to be president of the United States. (Proud of her dual citizenship, she says she'd like to serve as prime minister of Canada too.)
Canada is a wonderful country.....
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
It couldn't have been that universal since people like Blackstone and Madison disagreed with it.
We already have one.
Madison:
“It is an established maxim, that birth is a criterion of allegiance. Birth, however, derives its force sometimes from place, and sometimes from parentage; but, in general place is the most certain criterion; it is what applies in the United States.”
I think the guy who wrote the thing, knew what the words meant...
“...place is the most certain criterion; it IS WHAT APPLIES IN THE UNITED STATES.”
Why? Because place contributes to attachment. The Framers wanted someone imbued with natural patriotic fervor. THEREFORE PLACE MATTERS.
Yes he did. To Madison it meant the same as it meant to William Blackstone; that it was locale that decided loyalty and not the parents. Natural born citizens are citizens born in the country of citizenship, regardless of whether their parents are citizens or not. Congress has expanded that definition to include people born outside the U.S. of citizen parents as long as the parents met certain requirements. But all is in keeping with the Constitution's determination that there are two forms of citizenship only.
OMG... Congress has no authority to amend the meaning of words in the Constitution. Even if they amend the Constitution they must first NEGATE the clause they wish to amend, then substitute a new clause. This is why acts of Congress have NO BEARING ON THIS ISSUE. All that matters is: What did natural born mean when it was included in the Constitution. I thought conservatives didn’t believe in a “living Constitution.” Gee, guess I was wrong.
Congrats you managed a little research. but did a poor job of understanding, in that the snippet you choose is not what it seems.
(for those that wish to read the entire letter from madison)
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_2_2s6.html
but the short of it is that the issue at hand was the
Madison states that IF South Carolina had laws on this issue they would guide the decision on Smith.
“It were to be wished, that we had some law adduced more precisely defining the qualities of a citizen or an alien; particular laws of this kind, have obtained in some of the states; if such a law existed in South-Carolina, it might have prevented this question from ever coming before us; but since this has not been the case, let us settle some general principles before we proceed to the presumptive proof arising from public measures under the law, which tend to give support to the inference drawn from such principles.
The Paragraph you edited (do you work for CBS ?) continues...
it is an established maxim that birth is a criterion of allegiance. Birth however derives its force sometimes from place and sometimes from parentage, but in general place is the most certain criterion; it is what applies in the United States; it will therefore be unnecessary to investigate any other. Mr. Smith founds his claim upon his birthright; his ancestors were among the first settlers of that colony.
Since Madison states that there is no need to “investigate any other” that presupposes that there are “other”
Note also that the term “in general” by its use means that it is NOT the only method (as the paragraph states parentage).
Note the word Sometimes “derives its force sometimes from place and sometimes from parentage”
Your blinders are to tight you may want to have them checked out.
Congress didn't do that. The Constitution gives Congress the power to write laws of naturalization. An obvious part of that is to define who doesn't need to be naturalized to be citizens, i.e. natural-born citizens.
This is why acts of Congress have NO BEARING ON THIS ISSUE.
Sure they do.
What did natural born mean when it was included in the Constitution.
That definition depended on who you were talking to. Some, like Vattel, believed citizenship of the parents was the prime deciding factor. Others, like Blackwell, believed it was place of birth that was the deciding factor. Since the Constitution didn't define the term then it was certainly within the province of the Congress to do so.
Gee, guess I was wrong.
I certainly don't think that your being wrong on this question determines if you are conservative or not. And neither should you.
Thanks, onyx, for the link to that thread.
HMS said: “The CATO Institute is NOT GOD. Their opinion is flawed for the same reason that most conservatives have swung 180 degrees on this issue..”
You are right the CATO Institute is NOT GOD - but Jim Robinson IS on this website because he owns it.
You miss the point of the link onyx posted. That link is about Cruz’s eligibility and Jim put that article on and he posted over and over on that thread. Some Freepers WERE ZOTTED because they kept on and on about Cruz not being eligible. Jim WARNED them, but they kept on so he zotted them.
There are over a thousand posts on that thread and it would behoove you to read them and THEN decide about your future posts about Cruz not being eligible.
I think we are done on this subject.
Don't trust people's words when you can check read the original. First, from the First Congress, March 26, 1790, Statute II, "And the children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens:..." Experience prompts me to quote the rest of the paragraph, but that is a waste of time because of the footnote "(a) This act was repealed by an act passed January 29, 1795, chap. 20."
Did the Cato author not read the act? Levine, from whom I've learned much, cannot have missed this correction of the only mention of Natural Born Citizenship by Congress in our history. The Supreme Court has original jurisdiction, Article III Section 2 for interpretation of the Constitution. My assumption is that the 1795 and 1802 application of Article 1 Section 8, the Naturalization Provision, the grounds asserted as authority for the natural born citizen claim in the 1790 Act was reexamined and Congress realized their law violated the Constitution. The Act was certainly changed, signed by G. Washington, the term natural born citizen replaced with "citizen", the class of citizen which Congress had the responsibility for defining. The only citizen defined by the Constitution was a natural born citizen.
As in Wong Kim Ark, where Wong Kim was born in San Francisco to Chinese parents permanently domiciled in the U.S., Wong Kim was declared a "citizen", and Minor v. Happersett's clear exposition of Vattel's definition quoted and cited by Justice Gray. Again, read the explanation by expert, Mario Apuzzo, in his latest blog at puzo1.blogspot.com. Mr. Apuzzo quotes and explains a half dozen or so supreme court cases that should help people to understand why the definition Chief Justice Marshall found the most concise for natural born citizenship.
If we needed a reminder of why the "Dreams from My Father" are such an important consideration for protecting the first post-enlightenment representative republic, built upon the notion of sovereign individual rights, we have him now in the White House. HIs fathers were both Muslims, and one was socialist/communist. Senator Obama campaigned for his cousin, Odinga, while both were running for the presidency of their countries. Odinga's muslim cohorts openly threatened, and then burned about one thousand churches after Odinga lost his campaign for Kenyan president, forcing Kenya into a power sharing arrangement with the Muslim Brotherhood, whose representatives occupy many executive positions in the U.S. government.
Obama is the poster boy for why the author of the 14th Amendment, Judge and Congressman John Bingham, making slaves into citizen so that their children, born on sovereign U.S. soil would be natural born citizen, told us in two Congressional hearings where he explained the meaning of natural born citizenship, and why no one questioned it:
I find no fault with the introductory clause [S 61 Bill], which is simply declaratory of what is written in the Constitution, that every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen….
Does anyone believe that either of Obama's fathers owed no allegiance to any foreign sovereignty?
Let me predict the future for y’all...
Cruz wins the nomination and the meme immediately becomes...
“He wasn’t even born in the country! How can he be eligible?”
In the Government’s brief for the Supreme Court in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, the government’s attorneys argued the following: “Are Chinese children born in this country to share with the descendants of the patriots of the American Revolution the exalted qualification of being eligible to the Presidency of the nation, conferred by the Constitution in recognition of the importance and dignity of citizenship by birth?”
And Mr. Justice Gray, writing for the majority in Wong wrote: “[An alien parent’s] allegiance to the United States is direct and immediate, and, although but local and temporary, continuing only so long as he remains within our territory, is yet, in the words of Lord Coke in Calvin’s Case, 7 Coke, 6a, ’strong enough to make a natural subject, for, if he hath issue here, that issue is a natural-born subject’
“Subject’ and ‘citizen’ are, in a degree, convertible terms as applied to natives; and though the term ‘citizen’ seems to be appropriate to republican freemen, yet we are, equally with the inhabitants of all other countries, ’subjects,’ for we are equally bound by allegiance and subjection to the government and law of the land.’
…every child born in England of alien parents was a natural-born subject, unless the child of an ambassador or other diplomatic agent of a foreign state, or of an alien enemy in hostile occupation of the place where the child was born.
The same rule was in force in all the English colonies upon this continent down to the time of the Declaration of Independence, and in the United States afterwards, and continued to prevail under the constitution as originally established.”
Why does Oklahoma need me? I go to two casinos in Oklahoma - usually one or the other every week. :o)
Does Oklahoma have election problems or what? Are you sure you want me to upset Oklahoma? I usually end up upsetting some people because I use the election law to help bring about fair elections.
You have the Choctaw Indians in Oklahoma and I am 1/16 or 1/32 Choctaw. The rest of me is English on both sides. A number of grandfathers ago, one married a Choctaw woman on their trail of tears to Oklahoma. Those Indians had stopped in Arkansas for a while and that is where the multi numbered grandfather met and married her.
When do you want me to head to Oklahoma for something besides casinos? :o)
James Madison, “The Father of the Constitution” became a dual U.S. and French citizen having accepted French citizenship. I don’t think you’re going to find too many people who question the patriotism of the 4th President.
RC (DLC: Madison Papers); endorsed by TJ as received 6 June 1793 and so recorded in SJL. Enclosure: Madison to Jean Marie Roland de La Platière, French Minister of the Interior, April 1793, gratefully accepting the French citizenship conferred on him by the Legislative Assembly on 26 Aug. 1792, and avowing his wishes for the prosperity and glory of the French nation and the victory of liberty over the minds of its opponents (Dft in same; printed in Madison, Papers, xv, 4).
In recognition of their services to liberty, the Legislative Assembly in August 1792 bestowed French citizenship on three Americans, Madison, George Washington, and Alexander Hamilton—the last two of whom did not respond to the award—as well as on a number of European supporters of the French Revolution (Archives Parlementaires, 1st ser., xlix, 10).
http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-26-02-0129
That was the meme for Obama and McCain. It had little effect on their candidacies..
The first lawsuit challenging natural born citizenship was Hollander v. McCain and the Republican National Committee, filed in New Hampshire U.S. District Court in April, 2008.
“What was the definition of “natural born” when the phrase was used in the Constitution”
Between 1785 and 1791 the term natural born citizen and natural born subject were used interchangeably by the Massachusetts legislature.
While true that the Founders/Framers were silent on the meaning of the term natural born citizen, Alexander Hamilton in 1795 said to determine the meaning of terms in the Constitution look to English Law.
Technically the first lawsuit was filed by Bill Aames.
“After reading a news story about the controversy, Bill Aames, a worker’s comp attorney in Riverside, Ca., filed a federal lawsuit March 6, 2008, in California saying an “actual controversy exists” and asking the courts to clarify the natural born issue.”
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2008/may/12/born-usa/
When did I ever say that acquiring dual citizenship would nullify your natural born citizenship? Strain, strain.. and there’s your gnat.
Dang... genius. English Common Law is still the law. So what have you proven here... exactly?
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