Birthright Citizenship-ers, Dual Citizenship-ers, and Birth-ers

An old BP2 post.

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Actually, this was germane. (germane means half german and half french)

"The g*ddamn Germans got nothin' to do with it."

You can not reasonably deny that NBC has been defined in Wong.

Yes I can. The answer lies in the language and source materials used at the time the Framers ratified the Constitution, as they indicate from Minor v. Happersett. And in that Constitutional-context, not a statutory-context, the issue has yet to be decided upon by the SCOTUS or via the Constitutional Amendment process.

And you sure can’t in the Indiana case. They come right out and say it, in what, one or two sentences.

I most certainly do! If YOUR interpretation of "see also, e.g., Diaz-Salazar v. I.N.S., 700 F.2d 1156, 1160 (7th Cir. 1983) (noting in its recitation of the facts that despite the fact father was not a citizen of the United States, he had children who were 'natural-born citizens of the United States')" falsely confirms that Obama is a NBC, I will affirm that it's a flawed and improperly applied lower court decision. In that regard, it is just like the 70 years of flawed decisions that emanated from the 1939 United States v. Miller SCOTUS Opinion that I schooled you on earlier.

Parsley,[And Jamese777] the only protesting is by After-Birthers who pick and choose SCOTUS Opinion citations like they're eating slop at a Chinese buffet!

(hey Monkey-boy, I think they're serving bananas for you over on the fruit bar)

1,964 posted on Sunday, February 28, 2010 1:25:59 AM by BP2 (I think, therefore I'm a conservative)

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To: parsifal

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Not one of those cases you cite above mean a dang thing. All of it bad obiter dictum.

Dick showed his true colors advocating butt rangers in the military.

Any one of the 534 (Al Franken was not seated yet) members of Congress sitting at the joint session called to count and certify the Electoral College vote could have stood up and raised a point of order which under the rules of both Houses immediately suspends business as usual. None did.
Any two (any one Senator and any one Representative) of the 534 members of Congress COULD have submitted WRITTEN objections to the certification of the Electoral College vote BEFORE the Joint Session was gavelled in to session, which would have forced an investigation by both Houses of Congress. No written objections were submitted.
Don’t blame Dick Cheney. Put the blame where it belongs.

-- Your description of this case is a little misleading. --

Not really. I just described how it works in practice. Some people say "born in the US" with no other qualification (meaning citizenship and loyalty of parents, etc. is irrelevant), is a "natural born citizen" for purposes of qualifying for the presidency.

In other words, some people assert that Mr. Wong was a "natural born citizen" for presidential qualification purposes.

I agree with your take, that while the case may have decided that Mr. Wong is a citizen, the case did not decide that he met the constitutional qualification. But my view of the case is a minority, even "fringe" view.

One more time:
Title 8, Chapter 12, Subchapter III, Part 1, Section 1401 “Nationals and US Citizens At Birth” of the US Code of Laws:
“§ 1401. Nationals and citizens of United States at birth
The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth:
(a) a person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

Again. Title 8, Chapter 12, Subchapter III, Part 1, Section 1401 “Nationals and US Citizens At Birth” of the US Code of Law

This statute or any other statute does not define who is a natural born citizen.

(a) a person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

A person born can be subjected to more than one nation or power. That would invalidate that person from being a natural born citizen because their allegiance is not total to the United States. The very reason the US Constitutional Framers wrote Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 to prevent future presidents who did not have the best interest of the country at heart. Why would anyone want someone at the head of the executive branch who could betray the country in matters of state in favor of foreign powers? Dumb liberals and treasonous people would. How about you jamese777? ...which appears to be the case that you want a president who does NOT look out for the best interests for the country or its citizens.

Really? What I read is " The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth: " and besides that was not the law in 1961....but then you knew that...

No, but the first paragraph was identical. It says that "a person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" will be natural born citizens.

According to the State Department...

The State Department doesn't decide who are natural born citizens, the law does.

Well keep thinking good thoughts...

Again. Title 8, Chapter 12, Subchapter III, Part 1, Section 1401 “Nationals and US Citizens At Birth” of the US Code of Law
This statute or any other statute does not define who is a natural born citizen.

(a) a person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

A person born can be subjected to more than one nation or power. That would invalidate that person from being a natural born citizen because their allegiance is not total to the United States. The very reason the US Constitutional Framers wrote Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 to prevent future presidents who did not have the best interest of the country at heart. Why would anyone want someone at the head of the executive branch who could betray the country in matters of state in favor of foreign powers? Dumb liberals and treasonous people would. How about you jamese777? ...which appears to be the case that you want a president who does NOT look out for the best interests for the country or its citizens.

If your interpretation of the law is correct, I am certain that the US Supreme Court will take up an Obama eligibility case at some point in time. Thus far they have not chosen to do so and they’ve had eight opportunities which were all rejected.

Its unfortunate that no major figure in opposition to Obama has pursued any of the eligibility cases or even written a brief in support of any of these cases, nor have any of the top conservative legal funds or constitutional law firms.

I believe that the way to defeat a president who is not looking out for the best interests of the country is at the polls on election day.

ANY President can take actions that work against the best interests of the nation. Even Ronald Reagan is the only US President to ever sign an amnesty bill for illegal aliens into law. That turned out to be pretty treasonous but Reagan didn’t know it at the time.

The categories of citizens that the Framers established in the Constitution is “natural born Citizen” and “citizen of the United States.” With respect to citizenship, the Framers gave Congress only the power to “naturalize” persons to become “citizens of the United States.” Hence, any person that is made a citizen by Congress that is not by the natural circumstances of his or her birth a “natural born Citizen” is necessarily a naturalized citizen and consequently a “citizen of the United States” but not a “natural born Citizen.”

In Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1856), the United States Supreme Court said that slaves and their descendents, whether free or not, were not members of American society even though born on United States soil and unlike the American Indians subject to the jurisdiction thereof. Hence, the Court said that they were not “citizens of the United States.’ To correct that ruling, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866. With this Act, Congress first declared what a “citizen of the United States” was. The Act declared citizens of the United States “all persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed.” 14 Stat. 27; Rev. Stat. Sec. 1992. Hence, this Act removed from citizenship any factor related to color, race, or past condition of servitude. Because of the controversial nature of the Act, Congress saw fit to introduce and have passed a constitutional amendment which would protect what the Act sought to accomplish from the political whims of future Congresses and state governments. We know that this Act became the precursor to the Fourteenth Amendment.

In Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303, 310, 25 L.Ed. 664 (1879), in commenting upon what the purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was, our U.S. Supreme Court said:

“Its aim was against discrimination because of race or color. As we have said more than once, its design was to protect an emancipated race, and to strike down all possible legal discriminations against those who belong to it. To quote further from 16 Wall., supra: ‘In giving construction to any of these articles [amendments], it is necessary to keep the main purpose steadily in view.’ ‘It is so clearly a provision for that race and that emergency, that a strong case would be necessary for its application to any other.’”

The amendment was needed to remove any doubts regarding whether blacks could be United States citizens. But the amendment only allowed these slaves and their descendents to become a member of the United States community by making them United States citizens. The intent and purpose of the amendment was to provide equal citizenship to all Americans either born on United States soil or naturalized therein and subject to the jurisdiction thereof. It did not grant “natural born Citizen” status. The Amendment’s framers were familiar with how the Constitution in many places and the Naturalization Act of 1790 (used “natural born citizens”) and 1795 (changed the statute to read just “citizens of the United States”) distinguished between a “natural born citizen” and a “citizen of the United States.” If the Amendment were to grant “natural born Citizen” status, it would have told us that a born citizen thereunder was a “natural born Citizen” and not only a “citizen of the United States.” It also would not have equated a born citizen thereunder to a naturalized citizen, for a naturalized citizen is not eligible to be President. Hence, the Amendment only confers “citizen of the United States” status, as that is the exact clause used by the Amendment itself and that is the same clause that appears in Articles I, II, III, IV and Amendments Eleven, Fourteen, Fifteen, Nineteen, Twenty-Four, and Twenty-Six of the Constitution and in various Congressional Acts. It just conveys the status of “citizen of the United States,” and as we have also seen from how the First and Third Congresses handled the Naturalization Acts of 1790 and 1795, being a “citizen of the United States” does not necessarily mean that one is a “natural born Citizen.” Indeed, both Minor v. Happersett (1875) and U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) expressly told us that the meaning of a “natural born Citizen” is not found in the Fourteenth Amendment or any other part of the Constitution but rather in the common law. The Supreme Court decided these cases after we adopted the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 and the Court in both cases was asked to decide if the subject person was a “citizen of the United States” under the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Fourteenth Amendment only tells us who may become members of the community called the United States, i.e., those born on U.S. soil or naturalized and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are U.S. citizens, “and nothing more.” Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162, 166, 22 L.Ed. 627, 21 Wall. 162 (1874). The Fourteenth Amendment gave the status of “citizen of the United States” to all those persons born in the United States or naturalized therein and “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” As to born citizens, the Amendment was not needed to make anyone a “natural born Citizen,” for that status was conferred upon a child by natural law and the law of nations. On the other hand, the Amendment was needed to clarify who may be a “citizen of the United States.” Under the probable meaning of the Amendment, it simply removed race, color, and condition of servitude from the application of the natural law and law of nations definition of a “citizen” and a “natural born citizen.” As the “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” clause is currently interpreted, which interpretation is questionable and highly debated, the Amendment went as far as to take Congress’s power to “naturalize” a child born in the United States of parents who were not citizens (one parent or both not citizens or even legal residents) as expressed by it in the 1866 Act and constitutionalized the status of that child to a “citizen of the United States.” Additionally, a Fourteenth Amendment born “citizen of the United States” does not need to go through any formal naturalization process as does a person wanting to be a “citizen of the United States” but who was not born a “citizen of the United States” under any Congressional Act. This more liberal rule can be better understood when we consider that Vattel informed that England was an exception to the general rule for being born a native or indigenes, in that in England the “single circumstance of being born in the country naturalises the children of a foreigner,” Vattel, at Sec. 214.

What is important to understand when questioning Obama’s eligibility to be President is that neither the Fourteenth Amendment nor any Congressional Act makes one a “natural born Citizen.” Rather, what their provisions create is at a maximum a born or naturalized “citizen of the United States” who are equal under the law. They do not create a “natural born Citizen.” Since the citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is supposed to mirror Congress’s 1866 Act, the Amendment makes one a born citizen through the Constitution who under the 1866 Act would have been a born citizen by naturalization by Congress and by so doing it produced only a “citizen of the United States” and not a “natural born Citizen.” Since Congress had neither the power nor intent to make anyone a “natural born Citizen” under the 1866 Act and the Amendment merely followed the path of that Act, the Fourteenth Amendment also would not have made anyone a “natural born Citizen.” What this all means is that all “natural born citizens” are “citizens of the United States,” but not all “citizens of the United States” are “natural born Citizens.”

To have the special status of “natural born Citizen,” a child needs to necessarily satisfy the birth conditions of that special status, i.e., born in the country to two citizen parents. These are two factors that occur naturally and need no law to be so recognized.

For my full article on this topic, see my essay, Obama - Maybe a Citizen of the United States but Not a Natural Born Citizen, at http://puzo1.blogspot.com/2010/03/obama-maybe-citizen-of-united-states.html

Mario Apuzzo, Esq.

First of all, the big difference between Obama and the Presidential examples you gave is that at NO TIME was Obama’s father ever a US Citizen.
And the same is true for the 15th President of the United States, James Buchanan whose father was born in Ireland and Chester A. Arthur, the 21st President of the United States whose father was also born in Ireland.

Second of all, with the examples you gave, you’ve giving just part of the story.
Let me clarify a couple of them for readers who may not know the truth and details surrounding Presidents James Buchanan (1857) and Chester Arthur (1881).

President Buchanan’s father, James Buchanan Sr., immigrated to the United States from Ireland in 1783. This was a turbulent and transitional year for the US, as the Treaty of Paris (1783) ending the Revolutionary War was signed between the US and Great Britain. Colonists had the UNIQUE opportunity to choose to become United States citizens (or return to England to remain British subjects) and by virtue of the Treaty, and Great Britain recognized those former subjects as United States citizens. By 1784, the Massachusetts legislature began to substitute the phrase “Natural born subject” for “Natural born citizen.”
Before the Constitution was ratified, United States citizenship was conferred on citizens by the States. As the Constitution was being ratified, each State forfeited the power of naturalization to the Federal government. At that moment, a citizen of that State became a citizen of the United States under the ratified Constitution. No formal naturalization was needed.

The Constitution was ratified Pennsylvania on Dec. 11, 1787. By that time, the Buchanans were both citizens of Pennsylvania and therefore James Sr. was a citizen of the United States. As a result, when future-president James Buchanan Jr. was born in Pennsylvania on April 23, 1791, he was a “natural born citizen,” born on United States soil to two US citizen parents.

The rest of your examples have been thoroughly de-bunked in the Blogosphere, going so far as to expose President Chester Arthur’s 1880 cover-up.

Going further, let me add a little more to the body of knowledge on Chester Arthur ...

Chester Arthur ran as the GOP Vice Presidential candidate with James Garfield in 1880. Garfield went on to be President, but served only eight months, dying on Sept. 19, 1881 because of complications from an assassination attempt 10 weeks prior.
Chester Arthur assumed the Presidency after taking the oath of office twice, like Obama. Just one month into his presidency, on Oct 19, 1881, he issued an executive order “to celebrate the Yorktown Centennial”:

It is hereby ordered, That at the close of the ceremonies commemorative of the valor and success of our forefathers in their patriotic struggle for independence the British flag shall be saluted by the forces of the Army and Navy of the United States now at Yorktown. The Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy will give orders accordingly.
Arthur kept many personal secrets, too. One well-kept secret he had known since 1882 was that he was suffering from Bright’s disease, a fatal kidney disease. This contributed to Arthur not winning his party’s nomination in 1884, becoming the last incumbent President to submit his name for renomination and fail to obtain it.
About 18 months after Arthur’s presidency ended in March 1885, he fell very ill on Oct. 1, 1886. On Nov. 16, by his order, nearly all of President Arthur’s papers, personal and official, were burned. The next morning he suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage and never regained consciousness. He died the next day. It is believed that he destroyed incriminating personal paperwork to conceal his lies regarding his birth covered up during his campaign and presidency ... (some have speculated that Obama may have done the same in the days before Election Day 2008, when his grandmother Toots died in Hawaii).

Back in the Presidential Campaign of 1880, Arthur P. Hinman, an attorney hired by the Democratic party, investigated the rumors that Arthur had been born in a foreign country, was not a “Natural-born Citizen” of the US, and was thus ineligible for the vice-presidency.

However, Chester Arthur had assistance from the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper in 1880 — acting as the FactCheck.org of its day. An article “interviewing” Chester Arthur about Hinman’s accusations (BELOW) was published on August 13, 1880, barely two months before Election Day.

In that article, Chester Arthur defended his birthplace (as Obama and his cohorts do today). Similar to Obama, Chester Arthur’s father William was a British subject, fleeing British-ruled Ireland for Canada then to the US, naturalizing as a US Citizen in 1843. This would have made Chester Arthur, born in 1829, a British subject “at birth” even though he was born in Vermont.

Seemingly, Hinman’s investigation was following the disinformation, decoy and distraction of Arthur’s place of birth, instead of focusing his investigation on Arthur’s status as a British subject at birth.

Could you please be so kind as to point me to where in the US Constitution does it state that a natural born citizen is defined by having TWO American citizen parents, as opposed to one, like Barack Obama? If its not in the Constitution, then where in the US Code of Laws is natural born citizen defined by having two citizen parents? And if its not in the US Code of Laws, then where in a DECISION (not a discussion) of the US Supreme Court is the term “Natural Born Citizen” defined by requiring that both parents must be American citizens?
Thanks.

If your interpretation of the law is correct, I am certain that the US Supreme Court will take up an Obama eligibility case at some point in time. Thus far they have not chosen to do so and they’ve had eight opportunities which were all rejected.

You may get what you don't wish for; past actions by SCOTUS by not voting to take up a particular issue has no bearing on future court actions.

Its unfortunate that no major figure in opposition to Obama has pursued any of the eligibility cases or even written a brief in support of any of these cases, nor have any of the top conservative legal funds or constitutional law firms.

More of a lack of political courage or will. That will likely change in the future.

I believe that the way to defeat a president who is not looking out for the best interests of the country is at the polls on election day.

The Rats can look forward to losing big time this November. That may give the courts the political will they lack at the moment to hear an Obama eligibility case on the merits.

ANY President can take actions that work against the best interests of the nation. Even Ronald Reagan is the only US President to ever sign an amnesty bill for illegal aliens into law. That turned out to be pretty treasonous but Reagan didn’t know it at the time.

No one can hold a candle to this guy who now occupies the office. Just about everything he does is not in the interests of this country. Reagan thought wrongly his amnesty decision would be the end of it, and versus Reagan's decision, it pales in comparison to Obama who wants to make citizens of 20 million illegals or more. I highly suspect you have crocodile tears.