Ted Cruz: Birthright citizenship "doesn't make sense" [Watch Video]

CBS News Face the Nation ^ | 08/23/2015 | By REENA FLORES

[SeekAndFind]

From the first image that you sent -— THE LOUISIANA DEMOCRAT May 19,1869...

It says that the 14th amendment is not self enforcing and requires further legislation to enforce it.

If so, then why can’t today’s Congress similarly pass a law that says that birthright citizenship applies from now on ONLY TO CHILDREN OF THOSE WHO ARE HERE LEGALLY?

[Nero Germanicus]

Supreme Court rulings since adoption of the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment in 1868 have had the effect of creating four exceptions to “all persons born...and subject to the jurisdiction thereof...”
1) Reservation and tribally enrolled American Indians prior to 1924.
2) Persons with diplomatic immunity.
3) Members of a foreign invading military on U.S. soil.
4) Persons on foreign public ships within U.S. territorial waters.

A person’s legal status can change by congressional action (for example the 1986 Immigration Reform and Border Control Act of 1986 which gave legal status to 2.7 million formerly illegals) so I agree with you that Congress could pass a bill and a president could sign a bill into law that withholds birthright citizenship from the children of illegal aliens.
Whether such a law would be upheld as constitutional is anybody’s guess and would depend on the ideological composition of the Court at that time.

[SeekAndFind]

Good, we agree then.

Here’s my take on what will happen if Congress passes the bill you described and gets challenged ( as it surely will ) and it reaches the Supreme Court ( assuming we still have the present members ):

IT WILL NOT BE UPHELD. The following are SURE to go against it:

Kagan
Sotomayor
Breyer
Ginsburg
Kennedy

AS for Roberts, it will depend on which side of the bed he wakes up.

[Nero Germanicus]

We agree again!

[Mollypitcher1]

Mark Levin is biased. He is also not the only voice on the issue. There are many who strongly disagree with him.

[Mollypitcher1]

The 14th Amendment was written specifically to address a male negro slave who had heretofore been only counted as a partial person. “Whole numbers” refers to this. It does not apply in Cruz’s case.

[Mollypitcher1]

You keep on posting the same stuff claiming “most” legal scholars agree. Well I don’t think “most” agree as there are certainly many extremely prominent scholars who state that natural born means both parents must be American Citizens as stated in Vattel’s Law of Nations.

[Mollypitcher1]

Actually, this might be an excellent argument to block the institution of Sharia law in the US as the Muslims have done in other countries. Sharia Law is completely in cconflict with our Constitution.

[Yosemitest]

"Well I don't think "most" agree ... "

WRONG, ms. OVER INFLATED EGO !
Take it up with the Supreme Courty of the United States and our Founding Fathers.
ORIGINAL SOURCES show that, not only I, but THEY TOO, DISPUTE YOU !

In 1798, the law on naturalization was changed again.
The Federalists feared that many new immigrants favored their political foes, the Democratic-Republicans.
The Federalists, therefore, wanted to reduce the political influence of immigrants.
To do so, the Federalists, who controlled Congress, passed a law
that required immigrants to wait fourteen years before becoming naturalized citizens and thereby gaining the right to vote.
The 1798 act also barred naturalization for citizens of countries at war with the United States.
At the time, the United States was engaged in an unofficial, undeclared naval war with France.
The French government thought the United States had taken the side of Britain in the ongoing conflict between Britain and France.
A related law passed in 1798, the Alien Enemy Act, gave the president the power during a time of war to arrest or deport any alien thought to be a danger to the government.

After Jefferson became president (in 1801), the 1798 naturalization law was repealed, or overturned (in 1802).
The basic provisions of the original 1790 law WERE RESTORED except for the period of residency before naturalization.
The residency requirement, that is, the amount of time the immigrant had to reside, or live, in the United States, was put back to five years, as it had been in 1795.

The 1802 law remained the basic naturalization act until 1906, with two notable exceptions.
In 1855, the wives of American citizens were automatically granted citizenship.
In 1870, people of African descent could become naturalized citizens, in line with constitutional amendments passed after the American Civil War (1861-65)
that banned slavery and gave African American men the right to vote.
Other laws were passed to limit the number of people (if any) allowed to enter the United States from different countries,
especially Asian countries, but these laws did not affect limits on naturalization.

Within a decade of adopting the Constitution, immigration, and naturalization in particular, had become hot political issues.
They have remained political issues for more than two centuries.

Did you know ...

Naturalization laws relate to the process of immigrants becoming a citizen.
Other laws have provided for losing citizenship -
- by getting married!
In 1907, Congress passed a law that said a woman born in the United States (and therefore a citizen) would lose her citizenship
if she married an alien (who was therefore not a citizen).
In 1922, two years after women won the right to vote,
this provision was repealed and a woman's citizenship status was separated from her husband's.

Also Notice the signature blocks at the bottom of this:



1st United States Congress, 21-26 Senators and 59-65 Representatives

[Cboldt]

-- The Supreme Court has never held a case specifically about the children of illegal immigrants. --

FN 10 in Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982)

Agreed it's not literally a holding. Excerpt from FN 10 ...

As one early commentator noted, given the historical emphasis on geographic territoriality, bounded only, if at all, by principles of sovereignty and allegiance, no plausible distinction with respect to Fourteenth Amendment "jurisdiction" can be drawn between resident aliens whose entry into the United States was lawful, and resident aliens whose entry was unlawful.

[Cboldt]

We can expel diplomats too. Just saying, "subject to the jurisdiction" is a line-drawing exercise.

I think Wong Kim Ark (and FN 10 in Plyler) have used an incorrect meaning for "subject to the jurisdiction." Both roughly say that if the US can prosecute a criminal case against you, you are subject to the jurisdiction. Diplomats have immunity, so are considered not subject to the jurisdiction. As I note above, they can be expelled, and I don;t know if that makes the subject to our jurisdiction or not. Illegal aliens do not have diplomatic immunity, so they are subject to the jurisdiction.

The dissent in Wong Kim Ark has the better argument.

[Cboldt]

-- if a diplomat commits a crime in the USA, can we arrest him or kick him out? --

We can expel anybody, even a king.

Diplomatic immunity just means they are immune to our normal civil and criminal legal process.

-- Or is it the case that a diplomat can rape and kill anyone in the USA and be immune from prosecution in this country by virtue of his diplomatic status? --

That is indeed the case, although most countries strip diplomatic status and let us prosecute. This happened recently with a manslaughter/DUI incident, IIRC.

[Yosemitest]

"there are certainly many extremely prominent scholars who state
that natural born means both parents must be American Citizens
as stated in Vattel's Law of Nations."

Arizona Court Declares Lawyers Mario Apuzzo and Leo Donofrio Totally Cracked on What Makes a Natural Born Citizen

Now IF the Court had given such a “definition,” it still would’ve merely been non-binding

dicta, or side commentary — as any such determination was clearly non-essential to the matter they were deciding.
Such reasoning might have been convincing to a later Court — or it might not have been.

But the fact is,

they simply didn’t create any such “definition” of “natural born citizen” —
in spite of Apuzzo’s (and Leo Donofrio’s) elaborate twisting of their words to try and make it sound as if they did.

And even if they had — which they didn’t — it would’ve been OVERTURNED 23 years later, in the definitive citizenship case of US v. Wong Kim Ark.
In that case, the Supreme Court told us quite clearly, in not one, but in two different ways, that Wong Kim Ark,
who was born on US soil of two NON-citizen Chinese parents, wasn’t thereby JUST “a citizen” —
he was ALSO “natural born.”

If he was “natural born,” and he was “a citizen,”
then it is inescapable that the Court found young Mr. Wong to be a natural born citizen.


The 6 Justices who agreed on the majority opinion (against only 2 dissenters) also discussed the implications of such status for Presidential eligibility.
So they in fact found
that Wong Kim Ark would be legally eligible to run for President upon meeting the other qualifications — reaching the age of 35, and 14 years’ residence.

Mr. Wong, who lived most of his life as a simple Chinese cook in Chinatown, never ran for President, of course.
And in the highly racial America of his day Wong almost certainly could not have been elected if he had tried.

But according to the United States Supreme Court, legally speaking,
Mr. Wong DID HAVE the legal qualification to eventually run for, and serve as, President of the United States —
if the People should have decided that he was the right person for the job.

There’s much deeper we could go into the issue, of course.
I haven’t found the time to refute Mr. Apuzzo’s bogus “two citizen parents” claims in the full, absolute detail that I would like to.
There is an awful lot of refutation here, here, and here,
though.

It would be nice to put ALL of the pieces together in one place.
However, for those who don’t mind a bit of digging, the references given above are a good start.

But never mind — a court in the State of Arizona the day before yesterday quite clearly and authoritatively refuted Mr. Apuzzo for me.
The court smacked down Apuzzo’s and Donofrio’s claims in no uncertain terms.

Judge Richard Gordon DISMISSED the ballot-challenge case of Allen v. Arizona Democratic Party.
And he did so “WITH PREJUDICE,” which means
“This case has been fully heard and judged on its merits
and we’re done with it —
don’t attempt to darken my door with this same accusation ever again.”

Note that again:
Apuzzo’s claim has been officially tried in a court of law, on its merits, and found to be totally cracked.
And the ruling struggled to stretch barely past two pages into three.
That is NOT a lot of discussion,
which indicates that this was not anything even REMOTELY resembling a “close call.”


The pertinent language in Judge Gordon’s ruling is as follows:

“Plaintiff claims that
President Obama cannot stand for reelection [in the State of Arizona] because he is not a ‘natural born citizen’ as required by the United States Constitution… Most importantly, Arizona courts are bound by United States Supreme Court precedent in construing the United States Constitution,
Arizona v. Jay J. Garfield Bldg. Co., 39 Ariz. 45, 54, 3 P.2d 983, 986 (1931),
and this precedent fully supports
that President Obama is a natural born citizen under the Constitution
and thus qualified to hold the office of President.
See United States v. Wong Kim Ark
, 169 U.S. 649, 702-03 (1898) (addressing U. S. Const. amend. XIV); Ankeny v. Governor of the State of Indiana,
916 N.E.2d 678, 684-88 (Ind. App. 2010) (addressing the precise issue).
Contrary to Plaintiff's assertion, Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1874), does not hold otherwise.“

Ouch. That’s gonna leave a mark.

So your statement that "natural born means both parents " has been DENIED by the courts !

[Cboldt]

This thread is on an entirely different subject than Cruz’s citizenship. The subject of this thread is the citizenship associated with persons born in the US, not on the subject of citizenship of persons born abroad. Just sayin’, your post is “out of place” and doesn’t fit into the discussion at all.

[Yosemitest]

Someone makes a FALSE accusation about TED CRUZ, I present the FACTS kin rebuttal.
It's just that simple, and you get offended at the TRUTH !
Go have a drink of ice tea.
It'll calm your nerves.

[Cboldt]

I understand, but you are running a separate conversation here, that started with your wall of text at post 40, which had nothing to do with the topic of the thread. Somebody else picked up on this side conversation.

I'm not offended by your posts, and I thank you for not posting your wall of text to me, in response this morning. I do notice you have a tendency to throw gratuitous insults, and in a spirit of kindness, remind you that sending gratuitous insults reflects badly on ones character.

[Yosemitest]

Call someone who care!