Posted on 02/10/2016 1:55:32 PM PST by drewh
With Ted Cruz the victor of the first contest of the GOP nominating calendar, we can no longer avoid the question mischievously posed by Donald Trump: Is Cruz ineligible to be president? Cruz was born in Canada to an American mother and a Cuban father. The Constitution says that only a “natural born citizen†can be president. Is Cruz a natural born citizen? (You may recall that before he attacked Cruz on this front, Trump spent months flogging a ludicrous version of this critique against President Obama, who was actually born in the United States, unlike Cruz.)
The words natural born citizen, and their original meaning at the time that this constitutional clause was crafted, go a long way to answering this question. In founding-era America, like today, a person could be a citizen by virtue of birth on American territory; a citizen by virtue of a statute that granted citizenship to him at birth; a “naturalized†citizen, meaning one who entered the country as an alien but later obtained citizenship via a process determined by law; and a foreigner.
A natural born citizen cannot be a foreigner. Foreigners are not citizens. A natural born citizen cannot be a person who was naturalized. Those people are not born citizens; they’re born aliens. Most important for the purposes of the Cruz question, a natural born citizen cannot be someone whose birth entitled him to citizenship because of a statute—in this case a statute that confers citizenship on a person born abroad to an American parent. In the 18th century, as now, the word natural meant “in the regular course of things.†Then, as now, almost all Americans obtained citizenship by birth in this country, not by birth to Americans abroad. The natural way to obtain citizenship, then, was (and is) by being born in this country. Because Cruz was not “natural bornâ€â€”not born in the United States—he is ineligible for the presidency, under the most plausible interpretation of the Constitution.
Sure there is. They desire to eradicate national identity over the long run, and substitute family identity in its place. They are globalists, intent on subverting the constitution.
What are you responding to? My post 247 was to svcw, not you.
Your post 247.
I still feel those individuals that make that claim are either liars or in denial with the desire to get their pet candidate nominated.
I'm not saying that. I find that it is settled law that he is not.
I did mistake your cite as being to the Katyal/Clement article, and just now noticed that their work was one of several you cited, so my remark in reply to 247 was wrong, being based on that false assumption. My remark to 247 was that the katyal/Clement article fails to cite controlling law.
-- There is no explanation for Mark Levin and Ted Cruz and their sycophants diluting and bastardizing the Constitutional requirement ... --
Sure there is. They desire to eradicate national identity over the long run, and substitute family identity in its place. They are globalists, intent on subverting the constitution.
I'm afraid you're correct.
Any hint of nationalism is met with cries of fascism, naziism and jingoism, oh my. Even from our friends. And in no place is this clearer than on the NBC issue, which by design keeps foreigners out of the White House ( and CinC as was specifically suggested by John Jay ).
Did you see what Cruz said a few debates back when he mentioned Trump's mother's citizenship? That little display did it for me, it proved he never even spent five minutes learning about Article II Section 1, and all his alleged Constitutional talents are now suspect to me. Levin and others breezed right by that embarrassment, either that or it went right over his head as well ( this would not surprise me as Levin is prone to interchanging terms such as "citizen" and "naturalized citizen" and "natural born citizen" ).
Never has an election cycle shed so much light on the rats in our own corner.
Understood. I did a cut-and-paste of both sides of the issue in order not to appear to be hiding anything from the Cruz sycophants.
That is what has me floored!
I never imagined that fellow Conservatives would ever argue that their charismatic religious feelings could trump the US Constitution.
I probably shouldn't be. I was amazed that Congress uttered ZERO words about the ramifications of dual citizenship in light of the NBC clause. Ignore the issue, and it isn't an issue. I view the government as totally illegitimate. We are a banana republic, for real.
By golly, you really don't have a sense of humor, do you?
Congress authority to naturalize seems to be very limited. Congress unnaturalized the nation.
Congress citizenship authority is limited to naturalization. Ted Cruz needs the 1952 Immigration and naturalization act.
Where does the law say that?
If it only required the citizenship then it would end with a period. It would not have the additional lines. Sorry....
That is ridiculous.
I must have been tired when I made that post because it was all jacked up. I meant to say that George Romney was ineligible. Mitt was eligible, but was just incredibly non-conservative. sorry about the confusion there. LOL.
If birthers would read the whole paragraph in context then it's pretty clear what the court is saying. Children born in the U.S. of citizen parents are natural-born citizens. There isn't any doubt in that, and I'm not saying there is. But the court goes further and acknowledges that there is more than one definition of who is a natural-born citizen. And that while the court recognizes that there are those who disagree with the expanded definition it also makes it clear that it is not their place as part of the Minor v. Happersett decision to say whether those other definitions are right or wrong. So no, the Supreme Court did not say that only children born in the U.S. of citizen parents are natural-born citizens. It says that it is the only unquestionable way of qualifying for natural-born citizenship.
Did you even read your link? In the case you cite, the one citizen parent failed to establish, via his presence in the United States for a sufficient duration prior to his son’s birth, grounds for the child’s birthright citizenship as statutorily defined by congress.
And, in the Thomas case, his citizenship is not "saved" by pretending, for purposes of law, that US military base abroad is US soil.
As for the child whose citizen parent or parents DO meet the statutory requirements, there is a significant body of SCOTUS case law that refutes your claim that they are natural born citizens. Rogers v. Bellei, Montana v. Kennedy, Wong Kim Ark, Miller v. Albright, to name a few cases.
At BEST, the passage you refer to is ambiguous. Its direct statement is that perhaps not all persons born in the US are citizens of the US at all. The court is probing whether Minor is a citizen at all, when it writes ...
Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first.
The court was not seeking to determine if Minor was a natural born citizen. The question was, is she a citizen at all? The court did not write, as you imply that it did, "Some authorities go further and include as natural born citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first."
So it is your assertion that two clearly birthright citizens, ordered abroad by the US government, could potentially give birth to a child who was “less” of a citizen than their parents? That is ludicrous at its face, and no reasonable person would attribute that intent to the Constitution.
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