Posted on 01/28/2016 12:59:06 PM PST by Kaslin
If you attend a presidential campaign event, you may come across someone wearing colonial garb or an Uncle Sam costume or body paint. But a Ted Cruz rally in Iowa last weekend featured something possibly unprecedented: guys dressed up as Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
This was not a random choice of attire. The guys in scarlet tunics were protesters, who passed out copies of Cruz's Canadian birth certificate to highlight the questions about his eligibility for the American presidency. The Constitution says the president must be "a natural born citizen" of the United States.
There is no dispute that the Texas senator was a U.S. citizen from birth, since his mother was an American. Donald Trump has raised questions, though, about whether Cruz, being born in the great state of Alberta, qualifies as "a natural born citizen."
Cruz dismisses the issue. "It's settled law," he says. "As a legal matter it's quite straightforward." In fact, it's never been settled, it's not straightforward and some experts don't agree with his reading.
The fact that it was Trump who raised the issue made it deeply suspect. But though it's unlikely that anything coming out of Trump's mouth is true, it's not impossible. And his claim that this is an unresolved question that could end up throwing the election into doubt happens to be correct.
When it comes to parsing the crucial phrase, Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe has noted, "No Supreme Court decision in the past two centuries has ever done so. In truth, the constitutional definition of a 'natural born citizen' is completely unsettled."
Tribe says that under an originalist interpretation of the Constitution -- the type Cruz champions -- he "wouldn't be eligible, because the legal principles that prevailed in the 1780s and '90s required that someone actually be born on U.S. soil to be a 'natural born citizen.'"
Cruz retorted that this is just what you'd expect from a "left-wing judicial activist." But Tribe, an eminent constitutional scholar, is not so predictable. He surprised gun-rights advocates years ago, before the landmark Supreme Court decisions on the Second Amendment, when he said it protects an individual right to own firearms.
Even if he's a judicial activist, the Supreme Court might agree with him. Cruz should know as much, because he has denounced the court for its "lawlessness," "imperial tendencies" and, yes, "judicial activism."
Nor is Tribe alone among experts. University of Chicago law professor Eric Posner says, "The ordinary meaning of the language suggests to me that one must be born on U.S. territory." Chapman University's Ronald Rotunda, co-author of a widely used constitutional law textbook, told me a couple of weeks ago he had no doubt that Cruz is eligible. But when he investigated the issue, he concluded that under the relevant Supreme Court precedents, "Cruz simply is not a natural born citizen."
Catholic University law professor Sarah Helene Duggin wrote in 2005, "Natural born citizenship is absolutely certain only for United States citizens born post-statehood in one of the fifty states, provided that they are not members of Native American tribes."
Steven Lubet, a Northwestern University law professor, spies another possible land mine. Cruz qualified for citizenship because his mother was an American citizen (unlike his father). But "under the law in effect in 1970, Cruz would only have acquired U.S. citizenship if his mother had been 'physically present' in the United States for ten years prior to his birth, including five years after she reached the age of fourteen," Lubet wrote in Salon.
That raises two questions: Did she live in this country for the required amount of time? And can the Cruz family prove it?
Whether the justices would take the case is another question. Unless some state election official bars him from the ballot on constitutional grounds or a rival candidate goes to court, it's unlikely a lawsuit would get a hearing. But if that happens, the Court may elect to resolve the matter -- and no one can be confident of the ultimate verdict.
Trump, believe it or not, is onto something. Cruz's candidacy suffers a potentially fatal defect. If Cruz is nominated or elected, he could be disqualified. When Republican voters cast their ballots, they have to ask themselves: Is he worth the risk?
I think you are wrong. The consulate or embassy issues a report of birth abroad for kids born outside the USA. My kids got one. I had to go through a process to report the birth and get the certificate before I could get them passports.
If that is so, then Ted Cruz would not qualify.
Close, but no cigar. Obama's mother did not meet the criteria of having lived in the US for 5 years beyond her 16th birthday when little Barry was born - the statute in effect at the time. But thank you for offering up that non-sequitor to the discussion.
Both. But his father's citizenship status at the time of Ted's birth is irrelevant to Ted's claim of US citizenship (but not to his claim on Cuban citizenship), because his father did not become a US citizen until after Cruz was born. Ted's US citizenship was acquired from his mother. His Cuban citizenship was acquired from his father, and his Canadian citizenship derives from being born in Canada, in wedlock recognized by Canada, to parents who were lawful residents of Canada.
I was posting here, posting the same info I now post about Cruz.
post 27 brings up a VERY good point
this issue would give the dems:
Cruz Control!
That pathetic child can stand when someone has higher poll ratings than he does.
Uh, you might want to read up on that.
He would most certainly have to have SOMETHING to prove his US citizenship. Even his campaign knows that because they made a claim that his mother HAD applied for the CRBA so Cruz could have a US passport. THEY know it.
Cruz was born and a Canadian birth certificate was issued to his parents. That is not sufficient proof of eligibility for US citizenship. Read that link. That is the offical requirement from Canada, US consulate on how to secure the US citizenship document. I am not making this up.
Born here of citizen parents = natural born citizen
No possiblity of being anything but a US citizen
Born here of foreign national parent(s) = citizen, with additional citizenship(s) possible, not natural born citizen
Born abroad of American parent(s) = citizen by operation of naturalization laws, additional citizenship(s) possible, not natural born citizen
Obama was born a British subject, he is what the founders were guarding against with the requirement
Ted Cruz is a great conservative Senator, unfortunately he is not a natural born citizen and is ineligble for President as the Constitution was written
If we accept the new definition as simply born a citizen, then we will be making every anchor baby and Winston Churchill eligible.
What is this supposed to mean? *rme*
Some of those Obama BC threads were the biggest threads around back then.
You missed all of those?
I’m not wrong. A CRBA is not required to get a passport and you are not required to get a CRBA.
https://travel.state.gov/content/passports/en/abroad/events-and-records/birth.html
“According to U.S. law, a CRBA is proof of U.S. citizenship and may be used to obtain a U.S. passport and register for school, among other purposes.
The child’s parents may choose to apply for a U.S. passport for the child at the same time that they apply for a CRBA. Parents may also choose to apply only for a U.S. passport for the child. Like a CRBA, a full validity, unexpired U.S. passport is proof of U.S. citizenship.
Parents of a child born abroad to a U.S. citizen or citizens should apply for a CRBA and/or a U.S. passport for the child as soon as possible.”
I was trying to get ANYONE to stop The Usurper from usurping the office for which he is ineligble. All I got from my elected Republican or Democrat representatives was BS. They KNEW he was ineligible and did nothing because they wanted to do away with the natural born citizen requirement. They’ve been working at it for years. All legislative efforts have failed so they just did it with Precedent Obama.
I don’t need to read up on it. I already read the document at the link.
A CRBA is not required to get a U.S. passport and a U.S. passport is sufficient to document one’s citizenship.
Not quite. There is no question that Ted Cruz acquired dual citizenship at birth. Dual citizenship is rather common.
If one wants to argue that Cruz is disqualified because his parents were abroad when he was born, one has to be willing to also disqualify all the foreign born children of U.S. military families, all the foreign born children of U.S. business expats on their five year assignments to Rotterdam, London, or Tokyo, all the foreign born children of U.S. diplomats, missionaries, academics teaching abroad, etc. There are a LOT of such people. I don't think anyone wants to disqualify them, or seriously thinks the Constitution does so.
If one wants to disqualify Cruz because one parent was a foreign citizen at the time of his birth, one will similarly have to disqualify many people. No one wants to do that. The lynch-Cruz-crowd is ciphering out mystical readings of 18th century notions of "natural born" and coming up with the idea that citizenship in such cases would depend on the father, not the mother. So on that line of analysis, Cruz is disqualified if we are prepared, and the Supreme Court is prepared, to uphold the legal inferiority of women -- not, mind you, based on anything the constitution actually says, but on the basis of creative extemporization of 18th century common law, never tested or litigated in 230 years, but now to be imposed by the courts in an ad hoc effort to disqualify a single candidate.
All this involves far too much stretching to pass the laugh test. The trick is how to singularly disqualify Cruz without tying oneself up in knots that will boomerang on many others. It can't be done.
In point of fact, the Constitution does not define "natural born citizen." The intent of that provision was to prevent would-be royalists from importing European nobility, naturalizing them, and making them president. We don't need crazy house mirrors and strained interpretations for that purpose. The simple and robust definition of "natural born citizen" is "citizen at birth." That is all that is needed. On that standard, Cruz qualifies.
Yes, I know, some adventurous democratic scholars are now arguing that there is a distinction between "natural born citizen" and a citizen "automatically naturalized at birth." That is the kind of nonsense on stilts that is being invented. Enough. If you have been a citizen since birth, you are eligible to run for president.
The previous post referred to “VP-elect”
The image was Dick Cheney introducing SlowJoe to the
Vice President’s residence in Jan 2008.
I did not get a choice. I got both for my kids and had to get the Report of Birth Abroad before I could apply for their passports. Maybe the law has changed since then, but Cruz was born before my kids were.
I hope I didn’t misunderstand you when you posted the photo, but isn’t that what all outgoing Vice Presidents do?
He has more love and loyalty to America than most of the freeping birthers. Tell thousands of Americans they are not citizens cause their mom was fighting overseas for her country. Or tourists that had their babies early in a foreign country that they aren’t Americans.
Wives of ambassadors who join their husbands or are ambassadors themselves that when they get back, their kids aren’t citizens.
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