Posted on 08/30/2013 12:02:15 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
By Ilya Shapiro, Senior Fellow In Constitutional Sudies and Editor-In-Chief, Cato Supreme Court Review
As we head into a potential government shutdown over the funding of Obamacare, the iconoclastic junior senator from Texas — love him or hate him — continues to stride across the national stage. With his presidential aspirations as big as everything in his home state, by now many know what has never been a secret: Ted Cruz was born in Canada.
(Full disclosure: I’m Canadian myself, with a green card. Also, Cruz has been a friend since his days representing Texas before the Supreme Court.)
But does that mean that Cruz’s presidential ambitions are gummed up with maple syrup or stuck in snowdrifts altogether different from those plaguing the Iowa caucuses? Are the birthers now hoist on their own petards, having been unable to find any proof that President Obama was born outside the United States but forcing their comrade-in-boots to disqualify himself by releasing his Alberta birth certificate?
No, actually, and it’s not even that complicated; you just have to look up the right law. It boils down to whether Cruz is a “natural born citizen” of the United States, the only class of people constitutionally eligible for the presidency. (The Founding Fathers didn’t want their newly independent nation to be taken over by foreigners on the sly.)
What’s a “natural born citizen”? The Constitution doesn’t say, but the Framers’ understanding, combined with statutes enacted by the First Congress, indicate that the phrase means both birth abroad to American parents — in a manner regulated by federal law — and birth within the nation’s territory regardless of parental citizenship. The Supreme Court has confirmed that definition on multiple occasions in various contexts.
There’s no ideological debate here: Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe and former solicitor general Ted Olson — who were on opposite sides in Bush v. Gore among other cases — co-authored a memorandum in March 2008 detailing the above legal explanation in the context of John McCain’s eligibility. Recall that McCain — lately one of Cruz’s chief antagonists — was born to U.S. citizen parents serving on a military base in the Panama Canal Zone.
In other words, anyone who is a citizen at birth — as opposed to someone who becomes a citizen later (“naturalizes”) or who isn’t a citizen at all — can be president.
So the one remaining question is whether Ted Cruz was a citizen at birth. That’s an easy one. The Nationality Act of 1940 outlines which children become “nationals and citizens of the United States at birth.” In addition to those who are born in the United States or born outside the country to parents who were both citizens — or, interestingly, found in the United States without parents and no proof of birth elsewhere — citizenship goes to babies born to one American parent who has spent a certain number of years here.
That single-parent requirement has been amended several times, but under the law in effect between 1952 and 1986 — Cruz was born in 1970 — someone must have a citizen parent who resided in the United States for at least 10 years, including five after the age of 14, in order to be considered a natural-born citizen. Cruz’s mother, Eleanor Darragh, was born in Delaware, lived most of her life in the United States, and gave birth to little Rafael Edward Cruz in her 30s. Q.E.D.
So why all the brouhaha about where Obama was born, given that there’s no dispute that his mother, Ann Dunham, was a citizen? Because his mother was 18 when she gave birth to the future president in 1961 and so couldn’t have met the 5-year-post-age-14 residency requirement. Had Obama been born a year later, it wouldn’t have mattered whether that birth took place in Hawaii, Kenya, Indonesia, or anywhere else. (For those born since 1986, by the way, the single citizen parent must have only resided here for five years, at least two of which must be after the age of 14.)
In short, it may be politically advantageous for Ted Cruz to renounce his Canadian citizenship before making a run at the White House, but his eligibility for that office shouldn’t be in doubt. As Tribe and Olson said about McCain — and could’ve said about Obama, or the Mexico-born George Romney, or the Arizona-territory-born Barry Goldwater — Cruz “is certainly not the hypothetical ‘foreigner’ who John Jay and George Washington were concerned might usurp the role of Commander in Chief.”
If they take you to the whipping post, suffer the momentary pain of grabbing the whip, then beat them into submission with the handle and cram it down their throats until they choke and depart this veil of tears.
“And specifically defined them as “Natural Born” Citizens.”
Yes, I should have included from the link you provided:
“..It specifies that such children “shall be considered as natural born citizens”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalization_Act_of_1790
This is the first time I’ve ever seen where our Founders specifically stated that “citizenship for the children of US citizens born abroad, ..” are NATURAL BORN CITIZENS
So, we need to win..... It is simply a matter of survival.
So rather than get angry at each other, I think we can all agree that priority number one is to win.
After we elect a true conservative, we will first fix what is broken in our checks and balances and then we will be in a better position solve this constitutional eligibility issue.
Either we will clarify the definition of NBC or we will pass an amendment changing the eligibility requirement.
BUT this can never happen now... WHY? because our government is too broken and dysfunctional.
Can we all agree on this?
University of Iowa in Iowa City.
Iowa State is in Ames, IA.
And just how would you propose enforcing your idea that Congress does not have the authority by statute to specify how long a citizen parent needs to have resided in the U.S. and how old they needed to be, to legally produce an NBC child that was born beyond our border?
Your thoughts about it are interesting to contemplate but are not in and of themselves either proven to be Constitutionally or statutorally legal.
Such matters would somehow have to be adjudicated and agreed upon to be followed by all relevant parties to the NBC issue, and they are not.
Sigh.
I wonder when, if ever, people are going to realize that their thoughts, reasonings, beliefs etc are NOT settled law.
So when they think they have “nailed” others who disagree with them on something, and get combative, superior, demanding, insulting and just plain HUFFY about the differences, that they are blowing smoke in the wind.
There is no there, there.
And when they do this on the internet, and on this website here, somehow they believe they have established something authoritative, when they have not because that is not how something authoritative is established.
I appreciate those who believe as CRUZ does about legal authority for NBC. They try to cite statutes, because the Constitution by itself does not give definition to NBC. But when they are attacked by others as being “unConstitutional”, dear Lord, give them strength to persist, because not the Constitution by itself nor the Courts have made a candidate ineligible who has been deemed eligible by our system, otherwise, on the NBC definition grounds.
And I can’t remember which Article of the Constitution does this, but the Constitution itself gives Congress the authority to define citizenship by statute.
It has been posted here several times, though.
So now you’re trying to say that the statutes go too far in setting age and residency requirements for a one parent who can produce an NBC child born outside the U.S. and that makes the statutes unConstitutional.
The point is, you have no way to establish that.
None. It hasn’t been adjudicated and agreed to by relevant parties to the matter.
Therefore, it remains merely something you came up with and wrote on this internet website.
I misspoke.
Thnx.
That language was removed by congress in 1795.
What you mean "we", Kemosabe?
Free Pie! Tomorrow!
Hawkeyes...
No, that doesn't make you a hypocrit. It means that you have weighed some confusing counter arguments and come down on the side of prudence. There is some doubt as to the technical definition in the minds of some, but there is zip zero nada doubt on the question of the intent of the very people who wrote these words. Their one and only reaons for even slipping this language into our Founding documents was to prevent someone not loyal to America becoming President. Cruz passes that test with flying colors. Period. End of discussion.
Sham, what an absurd comment. Let's assume for a second that Jim is wrong on the NBC clause (he is not) - it would still be simply preposterous and frankly silly to equate that to "compromise." And let's, for the sake of argument, say he did compromise because he wanted Cruz to win badly. Your comment is still ridiculous, in that in any large contract, you cannot void the entire thing by violation of one small part.
In other words, you are very self aggrandizing to think you and your merry band of curmudgeons hold all universal truth in one small jot and tittle. Just absurd indeed.
Why are you posting to me about Obama?
You can say anything you want.
I don’t know why it’s relevant to the discussion here.
I agree that his mother didn’t fit the statutory requirements of age and residency.
My last post here was dealing with the fact that another poster was claiming that any statute that specified # of years residing in America, and age, for one parent to produce a NBC offspring born beyond America’s border, was going too far and was itself an unconstitutional statute for that reason.
In that context I don’t get your posting to me that you believe Obama’s status doesn’t fit that statute.
I agree with you on that.
His mom was too young to fit into that statutory requirement.
So?
I was answering someone who was trying to argue that all such requirement-specifying statutes went beyond Constitutional authority in defining NBC.
And my point in reply was that there is no adjudicated authority establishing that person’s belief as “the law”.
It’s just a belief stated on the internet website Free Republic.
Whether Obama was born in Kenya or Hawaii or Timbuktu, IF either one of his parents had fit the statutory requirements that define NBC, he would still be an eligible. His father as you say was never a citizen. His mother did not fall under the age and residency requirement of the statute, she was a little bit too young. But the Kenya part would not decide it, according to the statute. The parental status would decide it.
Again, I was discussing an issue brought up by someone who was arguing that the statute itself went too far in specifying age and resident requirements for one parent to produce a NBC offspring that was born in another country, therefore was not a constitutional statute.
And my reply was, that has not been established under our system and is reduced to something you believe and posted here.
That statement has been made repeatedly here and repeatedly has been shown to be irrelevant
How ‘bout you realize that throwing in one-liners out of all context ain’t gonna cut it here.
It has been dealt with.
It doesn’t mean diddly when put in the full context of all that has been settled on this matter.
Anything that has not been settled has also not been adjudicated to disqualify a candidate who otherwise in our system in toto has been accepted as qualified under NBC.
And I assure you Ted Cruz has been down every road and sidetrack and jungle path and knows the very one-liner you just threw in. But he also knows what else there is to know which you either don’t know or won’t acknowledge.
As patriots of a nation founded on Christian principles, what we owe to our posterity is not "the benefit of the doubt" to anyone. We owe them a clear-cut definition of the words "natural born Citizen," as found in Art. II of the COTUS.
Those empowered by that very same COTUS to provide us with that service have avoided that responsibility, causing endless arguments among Christian patriots, as if by design of the unpatriotic, atheist, marxist Left.
The assiduous research quoted by those whom I disagree, or agree for that matter, is sincerely appreciated. The plethora of laws, statutes, regulations, dicta, related decisions, etc. do not directly relate to the questions surrounding the eligibility of Presidential candidates. They are extrapolation, pure and simple, on the part of those not authorized to do so. That would be us.
Cruz, whom I have come to regard as a great man and a voice for conservative principles of limited federal power, is not the someone we should ".... congeal around a single Tea Party Conservative NOW.... nor is any one else. Rather he should, IMNVHO, take this opportunity to lead a national effort to have the SCOTUS accept and hear on its merits one of the many valid appeals that have come before it and protect the Constitution.
Respected Justices of the SCOTUS have told us that they have avoided the issue. Why?
"Benefit of the doubt?" If the SCOTUS were to merely perform their constitutional function, there would not be a "shadow of doubt" as to who is eligible to run for the office of President and who is not.
What you have done is very illustrative of why the country is in the mess it is in. Effectively, rather than relying on your own intelligence, your own conscience and your own liberty to make a rational decision on your own as to whether or not the Framers intended to include the Children of Citizens board abroad as Natural Born Citizens, you have surrendered that individual liberty to 9 unelected and unaccountable people, the same people who gave us Roe v. Wade.
Do you honestly believe that a ruling by these CLOWNS (yes they are CLOWNS) is going to remove the "shadow of a doubt" that you have in your own mind as to whether or not Ted Cruz should be eligible to take the office of president?
Do you really have that much respect for the opinion of those 9 clowns?
George Washington in 1790, the year after the Constitution was ratified, signed into law a provision that the children of Citizens born abroad would be deemed Natural Born Citizens. This law was passed by the same people who wrote the Natural Born Citizen Clause into the Constitution.
Here we are eleven score and three years later and you are anxiously waiting for the same court that gave us Roe v. Wade and Obamacare to render a decision before you can possibly vote for a man who, if he had been born in 1790 would have been considered a natural born citizen in the eyes of George Washington?
You are a sovereign individual with a remnant of the Liberty that those who died in the Revolutionary war fought to preserve for you. Every day that Congress meets and every day the Supreme Court makes a ruling you are further and further away from being able to pass that remnant of Liberty down to your posterity.
And you are unwilling to give Ted Cruz the benefit of your own individual doubt and instead wish to surrender that decision to the Supreme Court of the United States?
How can you call yourself a patriot in a day such as this when you can't resist the temptation to surrender your own Liberty to a bunch of senile unelected buffoons, the opinions of whom you seem to respect more than Liberty itself?
Kenny, if you can't give Ted Cruz the benefit of the doubt you have as to his eligibility, then I just don't know what to say to you.
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