Posted on 03/23/2015 8:36:35 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Now that Ted Cruz is officially in the Presidential race, you may rest assured that some of the same people who considered it an insult of titanic proportions to even ask to see President Obama’s birth certificate will be kicking off a similar conversation regarding the Texas Senator. Because, you know… he’s a gosh darn foreigner. For the few of you who may have missed it, Cruz was born in Canada. His father was from Cuba but his mother was a US citizen. As our colleague Guy Benson explained over a year ago, this one isn’t even a question.
For the uninitiated, the Texas Senator and conservative stalwart was born in Calgary, Canada — prompting some to insist that he’s not a “natural born citizen” and is therefore ineligible for the presidency. But there are only two types of citizens under the law: Natural born Americans (from birth), and naturalized Americans, who undergo the legal process of becoming a US citizen. Cruz never experienced the latter proceedings because he didn’t need to; his mother was born and raised in Delaware, rendering Cruz an American citizen from the moment of his birth abroad. Meanwhile, Cruz hasn’t even indicated if he has any designs to pursue a White House run — he’s got his hands full in the United States Senate. National Review has more on this preposterous “debate:”
Legal scholars are firm about Cruzs eligibility. Of course hes eligible, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz tells National Review Online. Hes a natural-born, not a naturalized, citizen. Eugene Volokh, a professor at the UCLA School of Law and longtime friend of Cruz, agrees, saying the senator was a citizen at birth, and thus a natural-born citizen as opposed to a naturalized citizen, which I understand to mean someone who becomes a citizen after birth. Federal law extends citizenship beyond those granted it by the 14th Amendment: It confers the privilege on all those born outside of the United States whose parents are both citizens, provided one of them has been physically present in the United States for any period of time, as well as all those born outside of the United States to at least one citizen parent who, after the age of 14, has resided in the United States for at least five years. Cruzs mother, who was born and raised in Delaware, meets the latter requirement, so Cruz himself is undoubtedly an American citizen.
This was the same conversation that took place in 2007 and 2008 regarding John McCain. (McCain was born in Panama.) At the time, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama signed on to a simple resolution (along with the rest of the Senate) declaring that Senator McCain was “a natural born citizen” and eligible for the presidency. Given the current, rather toxic climate inside the beltway, I have to wonder if Ted Cruz will be offered the same consideration?
Perhaps a better question, though we’ve kicked this one around here before, is whether or not the Supreme Court will ever rule on this definition once and for all so we can just be done with it. True, we have some federal laws on the books which cover such things and they are frequently referenced when these discussions come up. And there’s absolutely nothing to indicate that this interpretation is any way unconstitutional.
And why would it be? The prevailing wisdom seems to at least have the benefit of sounding reasonable to the layman. Going back to the writing of the Constitution it was recognized that there are only two types of citizens recognized. You are either a citizen at the time of your birth or you become one later by going through the naturalization process. If we have to pick one of these two classes to be “natural born” it seems a rather easy choice.
But, yet again, that answer won’t be “permanent” (for lack of a better word) without the Supremes weighing in on it. And for that to happen, someone would have to challenge it. And that someone would have to have standing to even bring the challenge. You know… the more I think about it, maybe we should just stick with what we have now.
And once again, it even says "naturalization act". Hoo Boy, you just can't seem to grasp that something called a "naturalization act" naturalizes people.
I think you got some numbers transposed. I assume you meant 1783 when the Treaty of Paris was signed? Actually the country began existence July 4, 1776. That is even the date from whence early court cases counted citizenship as having began.
Modern court rulings aren't sources of anything except confusion. The further away from 1787 you get, the more court rulings constitute "precedential" crap.
No first principles, no weighing of original intent, just crap regurgitated from law schools who misapply the Wong Kim Ark Precedent.
Well at least you mentioned that detail this time.
The Naturalization Act of 1790 is the only statute in U.S. history to use the term natural born citizen. The Act distinguished foreigners who needed naturalization from those who qualified as natural born.
And the fact that it applied to the children of Americans born abroad indicates that they were regarded as foreign, absent that act.
And what you don't seem to understand is that the whole system has become one big Stare Decisis. It has become completely detached from it's original natural law foundations.
We are being ruled by unelected federal oligarchs who's whim becomes law.
Some of us have informed and rational opinions based on facts and logic, and others of us cite courts who get their opinions second hand from other courts.
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.” ( Or a citizen of the United States at the Time of the adoption of this Constitution ) At the time of adoption of the Constitution? So yeah, I remember. You know, words do have meaning.
Funnier and funnier. A "naturalization act" for those who do not need to be naturalized. You should do stand up. I'm laughing right now. :)
No really, I can't get over how unintentionally funny that was. I should bookmark this spot. :)
Yes, because your opinions are not validated until some D***head in a position of power agrees with you. And here all this time I thought "Might makes Right" was a false doctrine. So I guess slavery was morally acceptable so long as we were ruled by men who said so. Is that about right?
Congressman Bingham did not convert his opinion into a bill for an act that passed both Houses of Congress and was signed into law by a president.
Well now, see here, that is the central dispute isn't it? I am of the opinion that Congressman Bingham did indeed do that, and as lawyers are wont to do, they bastardized his meaning from what technical interpretations they could torture out of the verbiage.
The 14th amendment is a badly written clusterf*** and it's a shame someone of clearer thought hadn't cleaned it up before it got loose. Now it is causing trouble on an entire host of issues that have nothing to do with granting citizenship to freed slaves. (It's primary purpose.)
Yes he did, and i'm still laughing about it. The logical dichotomy is strong in this one. :)
“Yet, under current laws, illegal immigrants can sneak across the border and give birth and her child WOULD be eligible to run for president.”
No, that is a false statement. The illegal immigrants are foreign citizens, so their child is also a foreign citizen at birth with all of the obligations for obedience due to the foreign sovereign and the foreign sovereign’s laws, whether or not the child chooses to adopt that foreign citizenship upon reaching the age of majority. The same is true when the father is a U.S. citizen and the mother is a foreign citizen. In both cases the fact that the child was a U.S. citizen at birth due to the authority of a manmade and unnatural law granting such citizenship does nothing to change the fact the child was born with an allegiance and attendant allegiance and legal obligations to a foreign sovereign and foreign laws.
The natural born citizen clause was written to deny the Office of the President and the Office of the Vice President to any person who at anytime from birth to election was ever subject to the obligations of allegiance and obedience to a foreign sovereign and the laws of a foreign sovereign, with the exception of the Founders and their generation. This safeguard was intended to prevent a foreign sovereign from using the foreign sovereign’s legal authority to command a future U.S. President or Vice President or otherwise influence them to respect their obligations of obedience to the citizens of the United States and the Constitution.
The example you used results in a child who acquired U.S. citizenship only by the authority of a Federal statute or Federal law granting such U.S. citizenship at birth; which is a manmade, artificial, and unnatural law and unnatural citizenship by naturalization at birth. Natural born citizenship is acquired only by descent from two parents who were U.S. citizens at the time of the child’s birth, and none of the parents or the child were subject to a foreign citizen’s duty of allegiance and obedience to a foreign sovereign and a foreign sovereign’s laws. So, the child in your example was not a natural born citizen and can never be eligible under the natural born citizen clause of the Constitution.
Even if you accept his argument, that statute was repealed. You can't reasonably say that the 1790 statute has the power to grant it while arguing that the 1795 (and subsequent) statutes didn't take it away.
If the law can give "natural born citizen" status by saying so, then the law can take away "natural born citizen" status by using the term "citizen."
They obviously knew the difference because they had just used the term five years earlier. The removal of it must have been deliberate. (Probably because the philosophers of natural law pointed out that you can't alter the nature of someone by statute.)
You are wrong that both parents have to be US Citizen. My son was born in 1963 and my daughter in 1970. Both were born in the same hospital but in both times my husband's duty stations were different.
I became a naturalized citizen in 1977, To be exactly on June 12, in Junction City, Kansas. We were stationed at Fort Riley
Why thanks, that's exactly the effect we were going for!
“without the need for naturalization”...is not what the act had to say. It did say, “shall be considered as natural born Citizens...,” which is an act of naturalization at birth without some of the additional burdens of evidence imposed by law on those persons being naturalized after birth. A natural born citizen acquires U.S. citizenship by the authority of the Law of Nature and not by the authority of a manmade and therefore unnatural Federal law.
I'm halfway worried that this might be an actual problem for Ted Cruz. The way I look at it is if your ship has a hole in the side, you need to worry about that more than the grease fire in the Kitchen.
We have reached a point in our history where only a few people can set the ship right. I think Ted Cruz is one of them. ( I think Scott Walker is another.) I think saving the ship is of greater importance than following the rules, and besides, that horse has left the barn already with Obama.
But if Cruz gets the nomination, I hope this issue doesn't torpedo his chances though I can very well see how it might.
"No mission too difficult, no sacrifice too great."
Nice to meet you.
5.56mm
According to the law prior to 1922, you would have been naturalized immediately upon marriage to an American. All children born of the marriage would have been "natural citizens."
I will also point out that Vattel specifically noted that children born into the armies of the state in foreign lands were natural born citizens.
Or as I like to put it, where our soldiers stand, there too is America.
I suspect you would have some very interesting stories to tell.
Both my son and my daughter were born in Germany. We had to go to the American consulate in Munich to have them registered at which time they received their American Birth certificate
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