Further explanation as to why McCain and Obama are both natural born US Citizens.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE4DF103EF933A1575AC0A961948260
No Simple Matter to Be a Natural Born Citizen
Published: September 20, 1987
LEAD: To the Editor:
To the Editor:
William Safire’s column on Presidential ineligibility due to birth abroad (’’The Constitution’s Flaw,’’ Sept. 6) was entertaining, but it was not accurate. Lest someone who aspires to the Presidency be dissuaded when he or she need not be, let me clarify this thorny area of law.
First, Mr. Safire commits a common error when discussing the Constitution’s requirement that the President be ‘’a natural born citizen.’’ Mr. Safire believes this to mean native born, that is, born within the United States. A far more logical and reasonable meaning, however, is one who became a citizen naturally, through the circumstances of birth, and not through being naturalized, the lengthy and onerous process by which aliens become United States citizens.
One most definitely may have citizenship transmitted automatically even though born abroad. When is someone born abroad a birthright citizen? Under our immigration law we must start with the date of birth.
If you were born after Dec. 2, 1952, citizenship devolves if either parent was a United States citizen. If both were, either must have had, before your birth, a principal abode in this country for any length of time. You thus may be a citizen automatically although you may never in your lifetime set foot in the United States. And since only one parent need have lived here, one of your citizen parents could never have set foot in this country either.
If one of your parents was a United States citizen and the other was not, but was born in American Samoa or on Swains Island, and you were born abroad, you are a United States citizen if your citizen parent, before your birth, resided in the United States for one year.
If one of your parents was a United States citizen and the other an alien, if you were born abroad, you would automatically be a United States citizen if your citizen parent had been, before your birth, in the United States for five years, two before the age of 14.
Of course, as with most law, things are more complicated than they seem. Three other sets of rules apply for those born in the following three periods: before May 24, 1934; between May 24, 1934, and Jan. 12, 1941, and between Jan. 13, 1941, and Nov. 23, 1952. Since I earn my living as an immigration lawyer by helping clients to traverse this thicket, I do not wish to examine why Congress saw fit to change the law from time to time.
A more interesting constitutional question, one that keeps me awake at night and to which Mr. Safire may wish to devote a future column, is whether or not one who was born in the United States and therefore was a birthright citizen, but who lost citizenship and then regained it, can be President.
If one becomes a citizen of a foreign country, takes an oath of allegience to a foreign state or serves in foreign armed forces, one may lose United States citizenship. Later, he may repatriate and become a citizen again. Does the Constitution’s language, ‘’natural born citizen,’’ mean continuous citizenship since birth? Nobody knows. And as the issue doesn’t affect any of this year’s crop of Presidential hopefuls, we are not soon going to get an answer. DONALD M. KRESGE New York, Sept. 8, 1987
You just keep driving along making these unsupportable pronouncements--I am going to stop responding to you. You may think Safire was in error, but most of the Constitutional Lawyers I talk to have an equally firm view to the contrary. Doesn't make anybody correct until either Supreme Court tells you the answer or Congress and the several states amend the Constitution.
To me, it never makes any difference. If somebody hired me to talk to the Supreme Court, I assume I can win either side. But as an abstract proposition, my bet is on Safire's side of the argument--it means more or less within the confines of the 57 states.
"In the most detailed examination yet of Senator John McCain’s eligibility to be president, a law professor at the University of Arizona has concluded that neither Mr. McCain’s birth in 1936 in the Panama Canal Zone nor the fact that his parents were American citizens is enough to satisfy the constitutional requirement that the president must be a 'natural-born citizen.'"
We all know that Jeffrey Toobin and the other TV lawyer commentators other than Greta (who as far as I know has not yet addressed the issue) come down on the same answer, together with the Boston University Law Review and other secondary authorities.
The McCain question is important to the subject matter of this topic for the reason that it may well be the lever best used to pry the lid on Obama's denial campaign.
And McCain affords the courts, if they become involved, the opportunity to render a politically neutral decision, throwing both candidates out.