Posted on 05/01/2012 9:32:22 AM PDT by GregNH
Here's the deal...
Many legal analysts and scholars agree with this take-- and until the Supreme Court weighs in.. this is how the law is interpreted:
The Constitution requires that the president be a "natural born citizen," but does not define the term. That job is left to federal law, in 8 U.S. Code, Section 1401. All the law requires is that the mother be an American citizen who has lived in the U.S. for five years or more, at least two of those years after the age of 14. If the mother fits those criteria, the child is a U.S. citizen at birth, regardless of the father's nationality.
The brouhaha over President Obama's birth certificate -- has revealed a widespread ignorance of some of the basics of American citizenship. The Constitution, of course, requires that a president be a "natural born citizen," but the Founding Fathers did not define the term, and it appears few people know what it means.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
philman_36 is referring to the title of Title 8 of the US Code, not just it's section 1401. Chapter 12 of that title, of which section 1401 is a part, is titled "Immigration and Nationality."
That section is titled Nationals and citizens of United States at birth>
philman_36 is referring to the title of Title 8 of the US Code, not just it's section 1401. Chapter 12 of that title, of which section 1401 is a part, is titled "Immigration and Nationality."
There is a law that defines those born in the United States as citizens. Two actually. The 14th amendment and the very first provision of section 1401, which merely repeats the 14th amendment's provision. Congress only has the power to define rules/laws for naturalization. It's right there in The Constitution's Article I, Section. 8.
The Congress shall have Power...To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization
But there is no power to define who is "Natural Born".
That just means BHO isn't the first to be elected without being eligible. But, no one knew that Arthur's father had not been a citizen when he was born, it was just known that his father had been naturalized. It was well after Arther's death that the truth was determined. Arthur had hid the records, destroyed them, but he missed an archived copy of the naturalization certificate, so no one knew of the lack of citizenship of his father.
I'm not familiar with Fremont's case. But a quick check reveals that his parents were not married at the time of his birth, because his mother was still married to another man, even though he had tried to divorce her based on her affair with Fremont's father, who was her French Teacher, hired by his mother's husband. Thus legally that other man, Major John Pryor, was his father, not Jean Charles Fremon. A technical point to be sure, but the law is like that.
Congress was only give the power of defining a uniform rule of naturalization. Thus any law they make about citizenship, at birth, by group (such as Hawaiian residents), or by the rules they establish for individual naturalization, must be under that power. They were given no power to define Constitutional terms.
The 14th amendment doesn't use the term "Natural Born Citizens" so it can hardly redefine it.
Maybe, but the date might be the last time the law itself was updated or the last time they checked for updates.
The "notes" tab at the Cornell site indicates that section 1401 hasn't changed since 1994. That includes another section that would waive some of the Retention Requirements, which was also from 1994.
-PJ
Have I pinged you to what they're trying to do in Missouri with @HOUSE BILL NO. 1046
You ought to get a real kick out of that.
That's what I said.
@The 2008 is probably the last year of update.
Or did I not adequately state that? I tend to do that at times.
The power to define a uniform rule of Naturalization was delegated to Congress in the Constitution, not in the 14th amendment. The first Congress passed the first Uniform Naturalization Act in 1790. The second, replacing the first in its entirety was passed in 1795.
Here is the Text of both acts
The statute, makes them citizens at birth, absent the law, they'd be aliens. But a natural born citizen needs no law to be a citizen, they just are. The 14th amendment is, for this purpose, a law.
Actually it's the 5 Trillion and rising, dollar question.
But it is a very good question. The obvious answer is "to deceive without actually lying". Although he's been caught in enough outright lies that one wonders why he bothered in this instance.
But, OTOH, perhaps the only part of the Constitution The Won actually studied was the 14th amendment?
Yes you can have been, and all the "non natural born" Presidents were. The United States was not created by the Constitution. It's government underwent a massive reorganization, but the country had existed since July of 1776, nearly 12 years before the Constitution was ratified. The Constitution itself, in the very clause under discussion indicates as much.
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.
14 years before 1789 when Washington took office as President under the Constitution is 1775 thus the authors of that section must have thought the United States existed in 1775, else how could the first President have been resident in them?
Read them yourself Mr. Gato. They didn't define who were citizens. The 1790 Act, had it survived judicial review, which hadn't yet been codified, was repealed in 1795. Naturalization was a messy process, what with indigenous people, slaves, and with every state having different naturalization laws. Eventually, all those Acts did was to confirm that if your parents were citizens, and you were born overseas, and even if your parents were natural born citizens, your were a citizen, but not naturally born.
Most of the states only naturalized white men, women acquiring citizenship through marriage, as with Virginia Minor, naturally by inheritance. It is no accident that the 14th Amendment was filed by the man who tried Lincoln's assassins immediately following the end of the Civil War. John Bingham was one of the most prominent abolitionists, as well as a judge and Major in the Army. The 14th still didn't apply to 'indigenous peoples' - American Indians, because they didn't claim allegiance to our Constitution. (Now we tax them, and they get to build casinos, but I don't know when their naturalization was finally established). We were a nation of laws - once. Monarchies simply claimed subjects, whether they liked it or not, because they could then be conscripted, pay taxes, forced to abide the rules established by the King.
But you are correct about Article 1 Section 8, the naturalization provision. That is why its application to Obama and Rubio results in their becoming naturalized citizens at birth. Some argue that the 14th Amendment shouldn't have been necessary - was superfluous. But that is for another discussion.
But, you didn't!! You have shown remarkable thickness, an admirable resistance to common sense and no amenable tendancies whatsoever.
What a gift you are!
By refusing to accept fact and overwhelming supporting material from so many more than equally gifted professors of our Constitution and American law and history, you have been an outstanding sort of "classroom idiot", letting the rest of us learn while you refused to!
Thank you! By looking and acting the fool throughout these hundreds of posts, you've done a great service to the country and Constitution.
By being unteachable while surrounded by the best teachers, you've taught us all.
I see what you did there...and I won't forget the service you've done for us.
I appreciate the correction. That's a good way to learn.
Following your hyperlink to U of Indiana I got an error. Do you think Indiana has scrubbed the references? Indiana was once one of the least likely Universities to adhere to political pressures (the source of some of the best and most even-handed writing about Viet Nam during the volatile 70s). Cornell, with its strong agricultural college, used to lean a bit right of its Ivy connections, but has scrubbed portions of re: Lockwood at the behest of Center for American Progress. I will look more carefully at Indiana when I have time.
Thanks for the correction
To follow your suggestion I did find a useful compendium of most of the nationality acts written by an interesting guy whose interests revolve around Americans working or living overseas, Andrew Sundberg. He is based in Geneva, and this article of his is posted on a Chinese ISP. His group, Overseas American Academy, does not appear to be a fringe operation, and is more concerned with constitutional originalism than Cornell or justia.com. Among their concerns is the double taxation of Americans working abroad. His compendium of Nationality Acts is handy given the growing mistrust of any institution depending upon government largess for survival. Here is the URL. http://www.aca.ch/citizhis.pdf
As with any file from a site you don't know, and most of those we presume to know, copy the pdf file to your hard disk so that it will be scanned for viruses. I scanned and it was clean. I doubt that the Chinese can match Google or Facebook for the surruptitious monitoring software they install without asking.
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