Posted on 12/11/2008 8:20:46 AM PST by ckilmer
The clear language of the Constitution refutes your claim ... "No Person except 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"
This means that there is a difference between "natural born citizen" and "citizen of the United States." Naturalized citizens have never been eligible for the Presidency, so that does not enter into any discussion of the meaning of the language.
U.S. citizen at birth means a “natural born citizen” i.e. not a “naturalized” citizen.
I never claimed there was no distinction between a “natural born citizen” and a “U.S. citizen”, please engage what I actually said rather than what you thought I said.
My Governor is a U.S. citizen, but he is a naturalized immigrant and not a natural born citizen. In other words (for those of you in Rio Linda) he was not a U.S. citizen AT BIRTH.
Woodrow Wilson's mother was born in Scotland, IIRC.
That the language differentiates between "natural born citizen" and "citizen" in that language means that there is a difference between the two, with "citizen" not being naturalized.
So, "natural born citizen" means something more than a U. S. citizen at birth.
Shall we make you an honorary citizen of Rio Linda?
I never said there was no difference. In fact a gave a specific example of a U.S. citizen who is not a “natural born citizen” and thus would be ineligible to serve as President; namely my Governor.
I repeat to you. Engage what I said, not what you wish I said, wanted me to say or thought I said.
A natural born citizen means a citizen at birth, rather than a naturalized citizen.
Can a person be a natural born citizen of the United States AND be a British Subject, citizen of the UK at that same birth?
Sure. There's nothing in US law that prevents it.
No, I do not. I sought to explain to you the contention of the article that is the subject of this thread, namely that the language of the Constitution clearly differentiates between the "natural born citizen" and the "citizen," and that, furthermore, the "citizen" referenced in that language cannot be naturalized, therefore there is a difference between the "natural born citizen" and a U. S. citizen at birth.
Now, if you are quite finished with being rude, I'll leave you in your misunderstanding of the matter, never mind whether you agree or disagree.
The only misunderstanding is the one you seem to be laboring under that I was ever in need of any correction on this matter.
My governor is a U.S. citizen, but not a “natural born citizen”. My saying this would make it obvious to anyone with sentience that I recognize that there is a distinction between the two.
This provision is a historical curiousity, nothing more.
The framers appeared to disagree with your assessment since they worked to prevent divided loyalties with the Constitutional eligibility requirements and discussed it in their letter exchanges which have survived to our day.
That’s what I thought ... until the issue arose around O and I dug into more detail and thought about it more. I’m not convinced, and think it makes for a very legitimate Supreme Court case. Upshot: a parent of a child can greatly sway the child’s loyalties (even if long absent from that child’s life).
One issue is the frequency of “dual citizenship” imparted on a child of divided-citizenship parents. Do you REALLY want a President who is 50% beholden to another nation?
But did she become a naturalized US citzen before his birth?
“Interesting about Chester A. Arthur. I wondered whether any other president born after the adoption of the Constitution had foreign parents.”
No wonder Arthur changed his records, burned many of his records, and hid most others. He knew he did not Constitutionally qualify to hold office. Sound familiar??
The Constitution makes no mention of dual citizenship being a bar to the Presidency. If the FF wanted to ban dual citizens from the Presidency, they would have so stated in the COTUS.
and discussed it in their letter exchanges which have survived to our day.
The letter exchanges are interesting, but they do not override the plain text of the COTUS.
I don't know. But it doesn't matter, IMO. There's nothing in COTUS, Federal law or Case law that would disqualify someone born in the US from the Presidency based on their parents' citizenship (unless the parents were diplomats or fell into one of the other unusual exceptions).
Your governor is naturalized. That he is naturalized means that the Constitutional language under discussion does not apply to him, and can never apply to him. He's never been eligible for the office of President, and never will be, barring a Constitutional convention and an amendment that specifically permits a naturalized citizen to become President.
Now, if you're capable of reasonable discourse, without resorting to insulting language, you'll revisit our exchange, and hopefully come away with the information that I have been trying to convey to you. It doesn't matter whether you agree or disagree; that is what the author of this piece contends. Your definition of natural born citizen carries no more weight than this one, and probably less. The term only applies to the presidency, and so any other legal precedent outside of that does not apply.
To help you out, since you don't want to scroll up to the article with which you disagree:
During the research he did before filing his initial case, it became apparent to Mr. Donofrio that not only is Mr. Calero Constitutionally ineligible, but so are Mr. Obama and Senator McCain. Why? How could this be the case? Here is the relevant passage from Article II, Section 1 of the United States Constitution: No Person except 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.
The key phrase here is "or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President". The Founding Fathers included this phrase because virtually everyone was a British Subject at the time of the adoption of the Constitution. In other words, the passage serves as a grandfather clause conferring 'natural born citizen' status to those who were ALIVE at the time of the adoption of the Constitution.
No where else in the Constitution does the phrase 'natural born citizen' appear. The Founding Fathers were very leery of a person with multiple allegiances becoming the Chief Executive and Commander in Chief of the United States. The only way to ensure this would not happen was to require something else that no other office in this country required . . . the status that our President be a 'natural born citizen'. That is, someone who at birth could claim only one allegiance. Thus a 'natural born citizen' is not the same as being a US born citizen. They are not an interchangeable terms of status.
Do you see where you are at odds, both with what I wrote in reply to you, and what is written in the article that is the topic of this thread?
If you don't, you're being deliberately obtuse.
Yup.
Flip side: there is nothing in law saying someone is qualified to be POTUS given a non-citizen parent. There has been some obfuscation of this issue, especially as pressed by opponents of “anchor baby” citizenship, and by recent historical scholarship noting that President Chester Arthur went to great lengths to conceal his father’s citizenship in a matter comparable to Obama’s BC issue. It’s reasonable to assume the Founding Fathers made a distinct, if imperfect, effort to prevent those of divided loyalties from becoming President. There’s enough confusion that it’s time for the Supreme Court to weigh in.
Thus I acknowledged that there is a distinction between the two right from the beginning.
Thus your continued insistence that there is a difference that I am somehow not acknowledging is rather ludicrous.
My definition of a “natural born citizen” is that one is a citizen AT BIRTH; i.e. not a “naturalized citizen”. Every U.S. citizen is either one or the other.
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