Posted on 05/14/2015 8:44:18 AM PDT by Josh Painter
This should not even be an issue any longer, but there are still some out there who didn't get the legal memo.
First, some history:
The origins of the Natural Born Citizenship Clause date back to a letter John Jay (who later authored several of the Federalist Papers and served as our first chief justice) wrote to George Washington, then president of the Constitutional Convention, on July 25, 1787. At the time, as Justice Joseph Story later explained in his influential Commentaries on the Constitution, many of the framers worried about “ambitious foreigners who might otherwise be intriguing for the office.” “Permit me to hint, whether it would not be wise & seasonable to provide a strong check to the admission of Foreigners into the administration of our national Government; and to declare expressly that the Command in chief of the American army shall not be given to nor devolve on, any but a natural born Citizen,” Jay wrote.
Washington thanked Jay for his hints in a reply dated September 2, 1787. Shortly thereafter, the natural-born citizenship language appeared in the draft Constitution the Committee of Eleven presented to the Convention. There is no record of any debate on the clause.
To make a long story short, the question boils down to a matter of intent:
While it is possible to trace the origins of the Natural Born Citizenship Clause, it is harder to determine its intended scope—who did the framers mean to exclude from the presidency by this language? The Naturalization Act of 1790 probably constitutes the most significant evidence available. Congress enacted this legislation just three years after the drafting of the Constitution, and many of those who voted on it had participated in the Constitutional Convention. The act provided that “children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond the sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural-born citizens.” There is no record of discussion of the term natural born citizen, but it is reasonable to conclude that the drafters believed that foreign-born children of American parents who acquired citizenship at birth could and should be deemed natural born citizens.
In conclusion:
What can we expect if Senator Cruz or another similarly situated candidate runs for president in 2016? Undoubtedly, the controversy will continue with passionate advocates on both sides of the issue. A scholarly consensus is emerging, however, that anyone who acquires citizenship at birth is natural born for purposes of Article II. This consensus rests on firm foundations. First, given Jay’s letter and the language of the 1790 naturalization act, it seems evident that the framers were worried about foreign princes, not children born to American citizens living abroad. Second, the 14-year residency requirement Article II also imposes as a presidential prerequisite ensures that, regardless of their place of birth, would-be presidents must spend a significant time living in the United States before they can run for office.
Concurring:
Two former top Justice Department lawyers say there is “no question” Ted Cruz is eligible for the presidency, in a new Harvard Law Review article that seeks to put to rest any doubt about the Texas Republican. “Despite the happenstance of a birth across the border, there is no question that Senator Cruz has been a citizen from birth and is thus a ‘natural born citizen’ within the meaning of the Constitution,” write Neal Katyal and Paul Clement in an article published March 11. “There are plenty of serious issues to debate in the upcoming presidential election cycle. The less time spent dealing with specious objections to candidate eligibility, the better.”
[...]
The Harvard Law Review article is notable because it is a bipartisan assessment that Cruz meets the Constitution’s requirement that the president be a “natural born citizen.” Katyal was an acting solicitor general in the Obama administration from May 2010 to June 2011. Clement was solicitor general from 2004 to 2008 in the Bush administration and is, perhaps, best known nationally among conservatives for arguing the case against President Obama’s health care law before the Supreme Court in 2012.
Katyal and Clement review the intent and meaning behind “natural born citizen,” going back to the Founding Fathers. The question about citizenship and presidential eligibility has also affected Barry Goldwater, George Romney and John McCain over the years — and all met the constitutional test.
Katyal and Clement conclude in their article:
As Congress has recognized since the Founding, a person born abroad to a U.S. citizen parent is generally a U.S. citizen from birth with no need for naturalization. And the phrase “natural born Citizen” in the Constitution encompasses all such citizens from birth. Thus, an individual born to a U.S. citizen parent — whether in California or Canada or the Canal Zone — is a U.S. citizen from birth and is fully eligible to serve as President if the people so choose. Finally, another bipartisan consensus:
Legal scholars are firm about Cruz’s eligibility. “Of course he’s eligible,” Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz tells National Review Online. “He’s 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. Cruz’s mother, who was born and raised in Delaware, meets the latter requirement, so Cruz himself is undoubtedly an American citizen. No court has ruled what makes a “natural-born citizen,” but there appears to be a consensus that the term refers to those who gain American citizenship by birth rather than by naturalization — again, including Texas’s junior senator.
Case closed. Bye bye, birthers,
- JP
That would be incorrect. NBC remains, to this day, distinctly undefined by the courts. Even the State Department is not clear on the definition.
According to the Foreign Affairs manual published by the U.S. Department of State, statutory citizenship (i.e. granted by U.S. statute at birth) may or may not be equivalent to natural-born citizenship under the U.S. Constitution.
7 FAM 1131.6-2 Eligibility for Presidency
(TL:CON-68; 04-01-1998)a. It has never been determined definitively by a court whether a person who acquired U.S. citizenship by birth abroad to U.S. citizens is a natural born citizen within the meaning of Article II of the Constitution and, therefore, eligible for the Presidency.
(...)
d. (snip) In any event, the fact that someone is a natural born citizen pursuant to a statute does not necessarily imply that he or she is such a citizen for Constitutional purposes.
Simple. Let Hawaii produce the original. Under my understanding of Constitutional law, it should have been a requirement for getting on the ballot. No state law should have been permitted to stand in the way.
Let the State officials of Hawaii assert unequivocally that it is a "true and correct copy of the original record." Period. Full Stop. No weasel words or additional qualifiers. No additions of words such as "Or an abstract thereof."
Consider the possibility that “playing hanky-panky” was a political strategy designed to galvinize support from the liberal base and to demonize one’s opposition as racist without ever needing to use the term.
That's nonsense. Concern about his citizenship played no role in his support. The vast majority of his support is due only to the fact that he's regarded as "black." The media were giving themselves orgasms at the thought of having a "black" President, and so they deliberately skewed their coverage to engineer his election.
They did not give a fig where he came from. Chris Mathews himself said Obama was born in Indonesia, and then carried on like this didn't make the slightest difference to him, and i'm sure it didn't.
No, the "birther" issue only played havoc among Republicans and Conservatives, it never rose to notice in the Liberal ranks. It was always a non-issue to them.
Who are the other constituency groups that have their citizenship status questioned? Its Latinos and Asians. Obama got 73% of the Asian American vote and 71% of the Latino vote. Together that was 15% of the electorate and coupled with the black vote, 28% of the electorate.
The Democrat ALWAYS gets that same percentage of the Asian and Latino vote, and while we're at it, the same percentage of the Jewish and Black vote as well. It rarely changes more than a few points one way or the other. This is the norm.
It is only occasionally that a Republican can make inroads among these constituencies. Generally they don't.
“Take what your opposition considers to be your weakness and make it your strength.” — Saul Alinsky, Rules For Radicals
Well I consider rank stupidity and ignorance (not to mention down right insanity) to be the Democrat's main weakness, but sure enough, the media have turned that into the party's strength by pandering to the stupid and ignorant with every intention of keeping them that way.
The following excerpt is from George Bancroft’s “History of the Formation of the Constitution of the United States of America.” published in 1882.
George Bancroft (October 3, 1800 – January 17, 1891) was an American historian and statesman who was prominent in promoting secondary education both in his home state and at the national level. During his tenure as U.S. Secretary of the Navy, he established the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1845. He was a senior American diplomat in Europe. Among his best-known writings is the magisterial series, History of the United States, from the Discovery of the American Continent.
In 2 Bancroft’s History of the Formation of the Constitution... 192, reference is made to the fourth clause of the 1st section of article II. In the Constitutional Convention, says Mr. Bancroft:
“One question on the qualifications of the president was among the last decided. On the twenty-second of August, the Committee of Detail, fixing the requisite age of the president at thirty-five, on their own motion, and for the first time required only that the president should be a citizen of the United States, and should have been an inhabitant of them for twenty-one years. On the fourth of September, the Committee of States, who were charged with all unfinished business, limited the years of residence to fourteen. It was then objected that no number of years could properly prepare a foreigner for that place; but, as men of other lands had spilled their blood in the cause of the United States, and had assisted at every stage of the formation of their institutions, on the seventh of September, it was unanimously settled that foreign-born residents of fourteen years who shall be citizens at the time of the formation of the Constitution are eligible to the Office of the President.” (Corroboration for the statements of Bancroft are to be found in Vol. 5 of Johathan Elliott’s “Madison Papers,” page 462, 507, 512 and 521, and in Vol. 3 of Henry D. Gilpin’s “Madison Papers” pages 1398 , 1437 and 1516)
The part where it says "OR ABSTRACT THEREOF", which means it doesn't have to be true.
As I've mentioned to you before, Hawaii law allows an "at home birth" up to a year to be examined by a qualified physician, at which time *THAT* physician's name is putdown as the "birth Physician."
You keep arguing this topic as if everything Hawaii does is on the up and up, and you keep ignoring the fact that Hawaii has strange laws which are susceptible to abuse.
From reading various accounts of how Hawaii is a birth certificate mill for the entire pacific rim, it would appear reasonable to me to conclude Hawaii likes their laws with built in susceptibility to abuse.
A couple of years ago, I saw an account where make a statistical comparison of births from various states. Hawaii had an unusually large quantity of unattended and revised births compared with any other state.
I've got the link to it somewhere, but now my bookmarks are such a forest, I can no longer find anything. At one time, I could go right to it, but i've let my knowledge of this stuff get out of date because the issue is no longer relevant.
That said, it is also fertile ground for the agitator who wishes to confuse. On the one hand there is the ambiguity in the definitions themselves. On the other hand, it is easy for an agitator to use the foreign born nature of those involved to lay a claim of racist, xenophobe, or any other term intended to scare off reasoned debate.
A past confusion has been to purposefully conflate foreign-born alone as a disqualifier for birthing a president.
What makes the Obama situation different is the hiding of his past, the lack of trustworthy documents, and nobody from his childhood who has come forward with stories of his heritage. All prior presidents have came from families whose histories were never in doubt. Add to that the willingness to use race to stifle any challenge, and we are left with a pattern of behavior that seems to exactly fit what the Framers were afraid of.
Which means that the only line of attack left is to discredit the intent of the Framers.
This reminds me of when the Left circled the wagon around Bill Clinton. To protect Clinton they had to tear down their darling Thomas Jefferson (the Saint of separation of Church and state). Now, to protect Obama, they have to tear down the intent of the Framers.
In my opinion, of course...
So the question then is, if Obama had not run, would a Jindall or Cruz be running later, or would a non-Obama understanding of natural born self-selected them away from trying?
-PJ
On the other hand, you could be wrong, and they could be right, but you don't want to believe it, and so therefore won't.
Let me ask you this. If the U.S. Constitution granted Congress the power to define natural-born citizen, would those citizenship statutes have more legal weight?
And this is correct. The courts effectively changed the law and ignored original intent, just as the courts are wont to do.
“Simple. Let Hawaii produce the original. Under my understanding of Constitutional law, it should have been a requirement for getting on the ballot. No state law should have been permitted to stand in the way.
Let the State officials of Hawaii assert unequivocally that it is a “true and correct copy of the original record.” Period. Full Stop. No weasel words or additional qualifiers. No additions of words such as “Or an abstract thereof.”
You would be wrong. I wanted to believe that Obama was not a natural-born citizen. I was a birther for a brief period of time. Then I came to my senses after thoroughly researching the issue.
In fact, he was an illegal alien. He broke the law by lying on his Visa application. At the time, anyone associated with Communists or Polygamists were denied entry into the country. He associated (in fact was) both.
Also the term "Resident" as meant by the court in Wong Kim Ark was contingent upon having a permanent domicile in this nation, which he did not, nor would he have been permitted to have one. In fact, I believe he was deported for having low moral character.
That actually supports the contention that he is Obama's real father. Of course Obama Sr was a skirt chaser, so maybe it doesn't.
You want clarity on the definition? How about you look to the foundational theory of the document which created US Citizenship?
It’s impolite to post a thread and not participate in the discussion. You know this.
Its the job of the opposition, both in the primaries and in the general election to expose anything in a candidate’s past that might be damaging. It is the job of the candidate to try to hide anything in their past that might be damaging.
John Adams hired a journalist named James T. Callender to gather dirt on Thomas Jefferson for the election of 1800. Callender came up with Jefferson having fathered children by his slave Sally Hemmings who was Jefferson’s deceased wife Martha’s half sister.
In this age of Wikileaks and Edward Snowden, it is difficult to kerp stuff hidden. Even America’s most top secret information gets leaked.
I have many times.
I learned that a person born outside the US to citizen parent(s) was only a natural born citizen, if his parents were diplomat status.
When McCain ran, Congress passed a measure which had the effect, of deeming the private hospital that his parent’s status was like diplomatic status.
When Romney ran in 1968, he dropped out fairly early. But since he was born in Mexico, Congress ordered a legal opinion, which determined he was NOT eligible. His parents were US citizens, but not diplomats.
Just some things to kick around, amid the cheerleading.
If you are following the "natural law" arguments which are the foundational basis for the birther objections, the question is as nonsensical as asking if congress had the power to redefine pi.
It is like suggesting congress has the power to define "arms" or "speech."
Congress has the power of "naturalization" which means "to make like natural." This is good enough for almost all intents and purposes, but it isn't the same thing. It is the distinction between an adoption and being actually born to a family.
The "natural law" principle argues that this characteristic is inherent, like eye or hair color, and can't be changed by appeal to earthly authorities. It is beyond their power to tamper with nature. They can only tamper with man made laws.
But I think it was a common understanding that the base eligibility under the Constitution wasn't in question, only one's political fitness for office was challenged. At the top level of the country, people's lineage was well-known and not subject to exposure as "damage."
One never expects an honorable candidate to cover up their Constitutional qualification to serve.
-PJ
A directive from the document which created the courts is superior to a court order. Or at least it is in the minds of COMPETENT people. "Hawaiian Law" should not even enter in to it.
50 state election officials should have informed him that he must either prove he is eligible, or his name will not be added to the ballot. Of course nowadays we live with the nonsensical notion that they can insist on this when they want, and dispense with it when they so chose.
The enforcement of US Constitutional laws should not be left to the whim of state officials. It isn't allowed in any other examples of which I am aware. State officials are expected to comply with Constitutional civil rights laws.
Stop citing Hawaiian law. It isn't even relevant. The US Constitution trumps it.
It depends on the definition of “resident” under the law. The courts have used having a permanent address as the usual definition but resident gets defined on a case by case basis. it is usually contrasted with “tourist.”
Barack Obama had a permanent address in Honolulu, Hawaii and then in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Since there was never any legal action taken concerning his associations or marital status, those points are moot. He was never deported, eventually Harvard recommended his visa extension not be renewed and tbe INS agreed. He returned to Kenya.
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