Posted on 12/12/2015 3:56:13 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
That’s perfectly clear. We have two class of citizens: natural born and naturalized. All citizens are either one or the other. That’s quite different than the other statement that you posted. What’s your point.
But McCain did qualify despite being born in Panama.
You’re wrong.
Grover Cleveland served two non-consecutive terms, the only person to do so.
Obama is President No.44, not 43.
Two quibbles:
(1) From the article:
“All the sources routinely used to interpret the Constitution confirm that the phrase “natural born Citizen†has a specific meaning..”
“All the sources routinely used”?
Sounds intellectually lazy to me, Harvard. No footnotes? No citations? So, who are these sources? The Washington Post or The New York Times?
Has there never been any editing of a commonly used law-reference website, just prior to Obama’s nomination, to delete wording in a Supreme Court record as to what “natural born” is understood to mean?
-— The Examiner | 10-20-2011 | Dianna Cotter
“Someone was incredibly busy in June 2008 working on an illegal front invisible to the public; searching and altering Supreme Court Cases published at Justia.com which cite the only case in American history - Minor v. Happersett (1875) - to directly construe Article 2 Section 1’s natural-born citizen clause in determining a citizenship issue as part of its holding and precedent. In this unanimous decision, the Supreme Court defined a “native or natural-born citizen” as a person born in the US to parents who were citizens; a definition which excludes from eligibility both Barack Obama and John McCain.Â
In June 2008 no one was discussing Minor v. Happersett 88 US 162 (1875) with regard to Obama. In fact, those who were discussing the then Senator’s citizenship status had focused instead on his birth in Hawaii in a attempt to prove the future president was not born in the United States despite publication of the Senator’s short form computer generated Birth Certificate. It would not be until October of 2008 that Barack Hussein Obama’s eligibility would be questioned as to his status as a dual citizen at the time of his birth.
(Excerpt) Read more at http://www.examiner.com/civil-rights-in-portland/justiagate";
(2) Internal Inconsistency:
The article claims: “The Supreme Court has long recognized that two particularly useful sources in understanding constitutional terms are British common law.
“Both confirm that the original meaning of the phrase “natural born Citizen†includes persons born abroad who are citizens from birth based on the citizenship of a parent.”
[Note the casual use of the term “a parent”]
Yet a few paragraphs later, the article admits that the Naturalization Act of 1790 specified:
“Provided, That the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States . . . .â€[9]
[thus making the father’s residency the key determining factor in granting citizenship. Not just the status of “a parent, as the Harvard writers allege, but that of the male parent.]
Okay- that’s one theory.
Doesn’t seem to be the prevailing theory of those who make it part of their profession to look into such matters though.
No, the term 'natural born' only applies to the presidency, in all other contexts the term 'citizen' covers it...naturalized or otherwise.
If there was no requirement for naturalization, then it doesn’t matter.
I would be THRILLED to discover that Obama was disqualified, but if it wasn’t written out verbatim in the constitution (as opposed to a judge’s ruling), then there’s no recourse. That being said, I haven’t made an in depth study of the situation.
Well again, that’s dandy that you personally say so.
And you’re entitled to believe that. As a matter of fact, there are no doubt many other people in the country that read the clause the same way.
BUT, the Supreme Court has not. No court anywhere, seemingly has.
As a matter of fact, yes the article and the Harvard Law Review lays out a solid legal case for why Cruz is natural born. They especially do when they reference that a person born outside of the authority and jurisdiction of the British Crown but born to subjects of the British Empire was natural born. It certainly stands to reason that the idea of what the founders considered to be natural born would have been influenced by what the British government considered to be natural born.
Well they could have just said....”someone born in the United States of America of parents who were born in the United States of America.
That is the nature of our times and the Natural Born Citizen debate is an example.
I see a 'Natural Born' anything as referring to an essential unchanging pure quality, a born trait. We have Natural Born Killers, for example, or a natural born musician or natural born basketball player or natural born dancer, etc.
With regard to a natural born citizen, I was taught that citizenship is a form of inheritance that a child receives at birth from parents and place.
I was taught that a "natural born citizen" was someone who had received the same citizenship from all three sources.
In other words, a natural born citizen is someone born to citizen parents in the country where they are citizens.
That child is a citizen of that country and none other, as there are no other options to consider. Three sources, all with the same inheritance.
Natural Born Citizenship is an obvious, simple to understand, no lawyers nor education needed to define kind of thing.
Logically, it's a three input AND gate. The output is true if, and only if, all three inputs are true. See? Easy!
However, by the emotionally pleasing, weak and diluted, UN approved definition the authors are advocating, Ted Cruz is both a natural born Cuban and a natural born American who was born in Canada. Huh???
(Just out of curiosity, how old was Ted when the family emigrated to the US?)
I do not believe the Founders, who had just won a fight to the death for their freedom from royalty to create this new country, would want anyone but a pure American citizen in charge of the nation, it's laws and military, but they didn't have much to work with other than the eligibility requirement for POTUS. To me, their exception helps to clarify their original intent.
But the exclusiveness, purity, and legal common sense of NBC defined as born in country to citizen parents now feels emotionally offensive, just as marriage defined as only between one man/one woman is now offensive.
So we will dilute ourselves as we open our borders and fundamentally transform by redefinition.
Too bad, since it really isn't that hard to understand. For starters, just ask a child where a German is born, or a Frenchman is born, or an English woman is born, or where a Canadian is born, or where an American is born and you'll get a simple, straight forward answer to each.
It probably won't be Canadians are born in America and French are born in Germany and Russian are born in Japan.
Kids that answer like that are given special tests, counseling, several prescriptions and sometimes taken from their parents and placed in foster care.
There are FOUR lights!
Being born overseas does not make you a citizen at birth. Ya actually have to fill out forms and meet the requirements of such things.
There are plenty of children born to one US citizen overseas, that aren't citizens, ie left behinds from Vietnam being a prime example.
Our first Naturalization Act talks about who gets to become a 'natural born citizen' born overseas.
ML/NJ
Yes, I have no doubt that the Founders wording was specific and influenced by other writings/countries.
The term Natural born Citizen appears in our Constitution, in Article 1, Section 2, with these words, “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.”
Before the Constitution the closest reference we have to Natural Born Citizen is from the legal treatise “the Law of Nations,” written by Emerich de Vattel in 1758. In book one chapter 19,
§ 212. Of the citizens and natives.
“The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens. As the society cannot exist and perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights. The society is supposed to desire this, in consequence of what it owes to its own preservation; and it is presumed, as matter of course, that each citizen, on entering into society, reserves to his children the right of becoming members of it. The country of the fathers is therefore that of the children; and these become true citizens merely by their tacit consent. We shall soon see whether, on their coming to the years of discretion, they may renounce their right, and what they owe to the society in which they were born. I say, that, in order to be of the country, it is necessary that a person be born of a father who is a citizen; for, if he is born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of his birth, and not his country.”
66 STAT-] PUBLIC LAW 4 1 4 - J U N E 27, 1952 163
Public Law 414 CHAPTER 477
AN ACT June 27, 1952
To revise the laws relating to immigration, naturalization, and nationality; [H.R. 5678]
and for other purposes.
Be it enacted hy the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled, That this Act,divided into titles, chapters, and sections according to the following
table of contents, may be cited as the “Immigration and Nationality
Act”.
(4) a person born outside of the United States and its outlying possessions of parents one of whom is a citizen of the United States who has been physically present in the United States or one of its outlying possessions for a continuous period of one year prior to the birth of such person, and the other of whom is a national, but not a citizen of the United States;
NATIONALS BUT NOT CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES AT BIRTH
SEC. 308. Unless otherwise provided in section 301 of this title, the following shall be nationals, but not citizens, of the United States at birth:
(1) A person born in an outlying possession of the United States on or after the date of formal acquisition of such possession;
(2) A person born outside the United States and its outlying possessions of parents both of whom are nationals, but not citizens, of the United States, and have had a residence in the United States, or one of its outlying possessions prior to the birth of such person; and
(3) A person of unknown parentage found in an outlying possession of the United States while under the age of five years, until shown, prior to his attaining the age of twenty-one years, not to have been born in such outlying possession.
CHILD BORN OUTSIDE OF UNITED STATES OF ONE ALIEN AND ONE CITIZEN PARENT AT TIME OF BIRTH; CONDITIONS UNDER WHICH CITIZENSHIP AUTOMATICALLY ACQUIRED
SEC. 320. (a) A child born outside of the United States, one of whose parents at the time of the child’s birth was an alien and the other of whose parents then was and never thereafter ceased to be a citizen of the United States, shall, if such alien parent is naturalized, become a
citizen of the United States, when-
(1) such naturalization takes place while such child is under the age of sixteen years; and
(2) such child is residing in the United States pursuant to a lawful admission for permanent residence at the time of naturalization or thereafter and begins to reside permanently in the United States while under the age of sixteen years.
Again, that may in fact be the closest reference WE have, although it’s certainly reasonable to debate that. That does not necessarily mean it was the closest reference THEY (the Founders) had.
Although, in reading a little bit on your argument, you seem to subscribe, and maybe even took from this link that the Founders leaned more toward Vattel than Blackstone.http://birthers.org/USC/Vattel.html
That obviously is something we can only speculate and hypothesize on. One of the things I always personally look at is what did the early Congress and Founding Fathers actually DO? After all, these would have been, or should have been, the people most concerned with not violating the Constitution they so painstakingly drew up. Given that, as this piece mentions, Congress 3 years later declared that children born abroad to U.S. citizens were natural born. That actually directly contradicts one of Vattel’s conditions. Given that they also passed the Naturalization Act as mentioned, which granted citizenship at birth to a child of a natural born mother and a father who was a citizen who had resided in the country, it’s hard for me to imagine that even if Vattel had an influence on their thinking that they were complete purists on it in any sense of the word.
Anything’s possible. I just have always subscribed to and strongly believe that they, the Founders, made the distinction of Natural Born for a reason. And that is only used in reference to the President.
There is nothing in the Constitution about "nominations", and there is nothing about "running for President"
Anyone can do either of those things.
And I presume that, if State Legislatures allow the appointment of Electors who then vote for an unqualified person, that they are also free to do so.
What the Constitution does not allow is the inauguration of one unqualified. The founders made elaborate plans to deal with this, so I presume they believed that, some day, an unqualified person would present a majority of Electoral votes to Congress, and then the mechanism they put in place would have to operate.
The process was to enter the United States by a date certain and to remain there for a period, if the process was not completed the grant of citizenship was revoked. Pub.L. 82–414 § 301(b); 66 Stat. 236
The period required for retention was later reduced and then eliminated, in no way changing the fact that citizenship was by Congressional grant. Citizenship dependent upon Congressional grant is naturalization.
“A person born out of the jurisdiction of the United States can only become a citizen by being naturalized, either by treaty, as in the case of the annexation of foreign territory, or by authority of congress, exercised either by declaring certain classes of persons to be citizens, as in the enactments conferring citizenship upon foreign-born children of citizens, or by enabling foreigners individually to become citizens by proceedings in the judicial tribunals, as in the ordinary provisions of the naturalization acts.” - U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark
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