Open request to Senator Cruz

The Constitution requires that for you to be eligible to be president, both of your parents must be naturally born citizens. You do not meet that qualification, if I am wrong please straiten me out. If you get the nomination I promise you the democrats will do what the republicans are too scared to do.

Hey, DumbDumb, in speaking of "temporary residents" Trumbull is talking about ambassadors of foreign countries -- their children cannot be made citizens.

No, dumb dumb, he's using that as an obvious example to get his point across. If you will read further and stop truncating the quote, you will realize he specifically notes that Indians are born here, but owe no allegiance to the United States, and he keeps reiterating that "not subject to any foreign power" principle.

Then it was suggested that we should make citizens of all persons born in the United States not subject to any foreign power or tribal authority. The objection to that was, that there were Indians not subject to tribal authority, who yet were wild and untamed in their habits, who had by some means or other become separated from their tribes, and were not under the laws of any civilized community, and of whom the authorities of the United States took no jurisdiction... Then it was proposed to adopt the amendment as it now stands,-that all persons born in the United States, not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, shall be citizens."

As it should turn out, Indians did NOT get that "birth citizenship" you are always going on about until 1924. You can add the millions of Indians born since 1776, to the Millions of Blacks born since 1776, to the total number of children born to British Loyalists since 1776, and for good measure we can throw in all the children of Foreign Ambassadors born since 1776 to produce an astonishingly large number of exceptions (literally tens of millions) to which your presumed well known common law standard did not actually apply.

But I don't expect real numbers to get in the way of your misunderstanding of History, and I can also see why you prefer to keep the discussion nearly a century away from the actual founding era, so as to allow misleading British centric authorities to have a greater influence on the subsequent diversion from the accurate understanding laid down when the nation was created.

Yes, Rawle did some very effective dirty work when he promulgated that incorrect assertion through his book, ("A View of the Constitution") written after most people who would challenge him were safely dead.

Nobody is concealing anything. You are just not taken seriously enough that I bother to look up primary sources, and instead I just pull crap off the internet.

You've never looked up the primary sources. You can't have ever read Wilson's comments in context (nor anyone else's) or else you wouldn't be citing them. You're lazy; that's why it's easy to toy with you.

His opinion still has zero provenance to the men who knew the correct answer

LOL. You were all gung-ho about citing the House Judiciary Committee Chairman. Now that I've shown you're way off base, you shift tack and claim his opinion lacks provenance?

Who, btw, in any of the debates in the 39th Congress on citizenship is citing to any of the authorities whose views you assert have provenance? The ones I'm seeing cited are the likes of Blackstone, James Kent, William Rawle, and the "great case of Lynch v. Clarke." Your supposed "sources with provenance" are absent.

Face it, your oft-stated claim that Horace Gray's opinion erred by not adequately considering the legislative history now lies dead like road-kill rotting in the summer sun. Howard, Trumbull, Wilson and others clearly advocated the view that Gray embraced. You can selectively sample and truncate quotes all day, my statement remains true.

which is pretty much the only sort of people you've got on your side

I've got the authors of the Civil Rights Act (Trumbull) and the draftsman of the 14 Amendment citizenship clause (Howard) squarely on my side. Plus Wilson (whose view is in no way explicitly challenged by Bingham). Your appeal to the legislative history is clearly premised on your merely finding stuff others and put on the internet and believing that told the story.

he's using that as an obvious example to get his point across.

Bullcrap. You just block out and plow aside anything inconvenient to your argument. Trumbull repeatedly makes the point that children born here of non-naturalized immigrant are citizens:

"I understand that under the naturalization laws the children who are born here of parents who have not been naturalized are citizens. Is not the child born in this country of German parents a citizen?" Sen. Trumbull, Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. 497 (1866).

"I am afraid that we have got very few citizens in some of the counties of good old Pennsylvania if the children born of German parents are not citizens."' Sen. Trumbull, Cong. Globe, 39th Cong. 1st Sess. 498 (1866)

"I have already said that in my opinion birth entitles a person to citizenship, that every free-born person in this land is, by virtue of being born here, a citizen of the United States, and that the bill now under consideration is but declaratory of what the law now is." Sen. Trumbull, Cong. Globe, 39th Cong. 1st session. 600 (1866)

Trumbull's statement that children of ambassadors can't be made citizens is the exception to the general rule. There's a reason Trumbull speaks of ambassadors. Contrary to your deliberate misread, ambassadors aren't just some example of "foreign persons." Ambassadors and their children are well-recognized exceptions to the common law rule of birth-citizenship, even as to the children of aliens. Children of run-of-the-mill foreigners are citizens; children of ambassadors are not and cannot be made so. Trumbull is following the common law..

"Then it was suggested that we should make citizens of all persons born in the United States not subject to any foreign power or tribal authority.

Are you now clear that in saying "not subject to any foreign power" Trumbull doesn't mean those non-naturalized Germans giving birth here to citizen offspring? Or do I need to pound this into your head one more time?

The focus here (and the same with "subject to the jurisdiction thereof") ISN'T with children of European aliens. The "great case of Lynch v. Clarke" can be put to the entire House as exemplary of "existing law" with no one batting an eyelid. They all knew this much. It was the same common law rule which had long existed.

But in a jus soli world, Indians pose a unique problem. You don't get this point, and so keep seizing upon language which is primarily concerned with Indian tribes and casting that back onto European immigrants.

As it should turn out, Indians did NOT get that "birth citizenship" you are always going on about until 1924.

Right. Indians were carved out as an exception alongside the familiar common law exceptions of children of ambassadors and hostile invaders. I said on a prior post "When the common law was adapted in American a third case was presented: Indian tribes.") You act like children of Indians pose some problem to my view: they don't; as usual, I'm two steps ahead of you in the discussion.

Horace Gray acknowledges this:

"The real object of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, in qualifying the words, "All persons born in the United States" by the addition "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof," would appear to have been to exclude, by the fewest and fittest words (besides children of members of the Indian tribes, standing in a peculiar relation to the National Government, unknown to the common law), the two classes of cases -- children born of alien enemies in hostile occupation and children of diplomatic representatives of a foreign State -- both of which, as has already been shown, by the law of England and by our own law from the time of the first settlement of the English colonies in America, had been recognized exceptions to the fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the country. Calvin's Case, 7 Rep. 1, 18b; Cockburn on Nationality, 7; Dicey Conflict of Laws, 177; Inglis v. Sailors' Snug Harbor, 3 Pet. 99, 155; 2 Kent Com. 39, 42."

I've already dealt with your point about children of British loyalists and shown why you miss the mark on that point, too.

I can also see why you prefer to keep the discussion nearly a century away from the actual founding era

Because this started as a discussion about the founding area and I've already beat your silly "it all started going wrong with Rawle" theory to a pulp. Swift (1795), Tucker (1803 - i.e., the one who quotes Blackstone's jus soli rule and then says U.S. law are "accordant"), Kent 1826) all write before Rawle and all endorse the same jus soli rule.

But true to form, you never addressed this argument. You just tossed out your nonsequittur about Swift, Tucker and Kent not having been at the Convention. So what? The point is that they were espousing the jus soli view before Rawle published his treatise. How on earth can you say this started with Rawle and manage to keep a straight face?

Speaking of avoiding the founding era, you keep avoiding this huge problem with your theory: how is it that the Framers could a) select a term ("natural born") that came loaded with a well-known common law meaning of "born on the soil) and that had been used interchangeably since 1776 when paird respectively with "subject" and "citizen" and b) supposedly ascribe to "natural born" a different meaning previously not used in English, and c) not give one indication in the record of any discussion on this point?

You and an honest view of history still aren't on speaking terms, it seems.

You've never looked up the primary sources.

Not with you anyway, and not so much anymore, but I have spent enough hours perusing the Congressional Globe that i'm tired of looking at it. I vaguely remembered there was some problems with some of them, but it certainly wasn't worth the trouble to wade through that again.

LOL. You were all gung-ho about citing the House Judiciary Committee Chairman. Now that I've shown you're way off base, you shift tack and claim his opinion lacks provenance?

I've never claimed that any of these men had Provenance, they are merely repeating whatever they've been told over the years. This is one reason why I insist you cannot get an accurate understanding of the issue by quoting people who were nearly a century later.

All the people who would know the correct answers were alive back in 1787. People who were not delegates or legislators during this era, really have only hearsay to inform their expertise.

Yes, interesting, isn't it? The very people who know the CORRECT answer are ignored, and people like Rawle are cited. I believe I know exactly why this is so, and I sent MammaTexan my answer to this question last week.

I bet you have absolutely no idea why this is so, and just assume that the opposing view is so inconsequential that none of them were aware of it.

But see here, this state of affairs begs the question. If "Birth on the Soil" is all that is necessary to impart US Citizenship to any child, then pray tell, why were they creating a piece of legislation to accomplish this thing which supposedly existing law already did?

What was it that Senator Trumbull said?

"I have already said that in my opinion birth entitles a person to citizenship, that every free-born person in this land is, by virtue of being born here, a citizen of the United States, and that the bill now under consideration is but declaratory of what the law now is."

If Jus Soli was the law of the land, why make a Jus Soli law?

All the people who would know the correct answers were alive back in 1787.

You mean the persons who in drafting and debating the Constitution selected a term ("natural born citizen") that came loaded with common law association? The ones you think adopted a contrary meaning but didn't bother to tell anyone that's what they were doing?

Those people? There were lots of people there in 1787, just none adopting this "super secret new meaning " to "natural born." Those exist only in your mind.

This is one reason why I insist you cannot get an accurate understanding of the issue by quoting people who were nearly a century later.

But when those later persons are saying the same things as other prominent legal writers stretching back to 1795, it's a strained argument that says all of them were off the mark. "Natural born citizen" was so obviously derived from the common law "natural born subject" and had prior interchangeable usage that it's fatuous to suggest the Framers intended that association NOT to be made.

Recall the words of Justice Scalia in the Heller case:

"In interpreting this text, we are guided by the principle that “[t]he Constitution was written to be understood by the voters; its words and phrases were used in their normal and ordinary as distinguished from technical meaning.” United States v. Sprague, 282 U. S. 716, 731(1931); see also Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1, 188 (1824)."

For most anyone reading the Constitution, both common citizens and delegates to the state ratifying conventions, "natural born citizen" was no doubt understood by reference to the language they knew - and that was the common law. This view that there was this secret group of French-speaking conventioneers or persons having a copy of Vattel who adopted this other meaning (but just didn't tell anyone) is stupid. It's a forced read on history.

The very people who know the CORRECT answer are ignored,

The better reasoned view is that these "people" are ignored because they didn't speaking clearly on the issue of the U.S. citizenship rule.

I bet you have absolutely no idea why this is so, and just assume that the opposing view is so inconsequential that none of them were aware of it.

I have a very good idea why this is so. Those authorities (Kent, Rawle, Sandford (Lynch v. Clarke), etc.) speak so early and so consistently to that view that in purporting to state the "existing law" it's impossible to ignore them, especially in the absence of any clear authority to the contrary. And that these authorities should speak so consistently is no surprise given that term chosen by the Frames ("natural born citizen") is so obviously derived from it's common law counterpart that it's impossible to think a different understanding could have been intended.

You have some theory as to Congress, but what about Chief Justice Fuller in WKA? Here's the Chief Justice of the SCOTUS trying to urge the point that Vattel should be taken as the original birth-citizenship rule. He's taking the same position you are! YET, none of these supposed "authorities with provenance" you brandish about are claimed by him in support. Now why is that?

The obvious answer (to any rational person looking at this with any hint of objectivity) is that these sources simply don't say what you claim they say. If they did, it's inexplicable that Fuller didn't cite to them.

If "Birth on the Soil" is all that is necessary to impart US Citizenship to any child, then pray tell, why were they creating a piece of legislation to accomplish this thing which supposedly existing law already did?

Seriously? You think this is a "real" question with an unclear answer? The depths of your ineptitude on history continue to amaze.

Well, DumbDumb, they were first creating a piece of legislation (the C.R.A.) because it was pretty obvious to everyone (excepting you, it seems) that the citizenship laws worked one way as to whites, and another way as to blacks (and Asians). So a white person born of alien parents (e.g, Julia Lynch) got treated as a citizen at birth while the likes of Dredd Scott (and perhaps this other mystery person you bring up when talking about Rawle) got a different result. And the very stated purpose of the legislation is to make the "white person rule" applicable to everyone else.

And then to make sure that southern legislators and judges didn't start getting creative and watering this down, they elevated that legislation to Constitutional status.

You really need this spoon-fed to you this way? Sheesh, you're dumb.

I began advocating to abolish the IRS in 1976 (replace income tax with nat’l sales tax) and Cruz has been pretty forthright about supporting that, so I would love to support Cruz for President, but I cannot because I believe in the Constitution.

The Constitution distinguishes between Citizen and natural born Citizen, in the very eligibility requirements for POTUS in Article II, Section 1. This is a fundamental national security provision of the highest law in the land and there is no provision for ignoring the distinction.

Ted Cruz is well aware of this distinction and does not claim to be a NBC. He passively allows low-information voters to recognize the difference - or not. This tactic worked fine for Obama.

Every US President born after Ratification (a salient point; see Art. II, Sec. 1) was born in the US to two citizen parents, except for two:

1. Chester A. Arthur, who lied about his citizenship status and burned his vital records just prior to his death.

2. Barack Hussien Obama, whose father was not a US citizen and who claimed for at least 16 years that he was born in Kenya until two months after he launched his 2008 POTUS campaign.

Now Bobby Jindal, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio feel at liberty to further erode the law of the land.

Is there no statesman willing to honor their oath of office to defend the US Constitution?

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