Posted on 06/24/2011 9:38:55 PM PDT by Seizethecarp
Since my last report, many people have asked why the definition in Minor v. Happersett of a “natural-born citizen” (as a person born in the US to parents who are citizens) is binding legal precedent. The answer is in the Court’s holding that Virginia Minor was a US citizen…because she was born in the US to parents who were citizens. That part of the actual holding is listed in the official syallbus of the case.
And furthermore, Minor was the first case to hold that women are equal citizens to men. To this day, that case is still cited as the first US Supreme Court decision which recognized that women were, in fact, citizens. It is still precedent for that determination. Google [ "minor v happersett" "women are citizens" ] and review the results. A multitude of articles discuss the holding of Minor – that women are US citizens.
(Excerpt) Read more at naturalborncitizen.wordpress.com ...
Time spent living overseas was of concern but the NBC requirement of two US citizen parents born on US soil was meant to minimize dual loyalty claims by another sovereign or to another sovereign, especially the UK sovereign! See the John Jay letter to GW.
Regarding the Italian situation, not unlike the claims of the UK that led to the War of 1812, See Leo Donofrio’s prior blog laying out how the US treated Italian claims to induct the children of US naturalized Italian fathers and the problems created by dual citizenship:
http://obamareleaseyourrecords.blogspot.com/2011/03/atty-donofrio-state-department-has.html
“Those who argue that the United States has no obligation to recognize and respect dual nationality – as to American citizens – have been unequivocally proved wrong by official correspondence between former Secretary of State Robert Lansing (who served from 1905-1920) and former Senator Henry Cabot Lodge.”
"Lansing stressed that the son had been born after the father naturalized as a US citizen. Had the son been born before the father was naturalized, Italian law would have required the son to serve in the military. But since the son was born to a US Citizen in the US, Lansing assured Lodge of the son’s eventual release from custody.
"Lansing’s confidence that the son would be released from custody is based upon his undeniable status as a natural born citizen of the US, whereas persons born to alien fathers in the US are susceptible to such custody by foreign nations. In my opinion, which I believe to be the same as the framers, no person deemed by the US State Department to owe direct allegiance to another nation should ever be eligible to the office of President."
Are you proposing that he’s ineligible to run for President of the United States?"
Did he owe alligience to Italy, from birth?
The framers would not have considered him a "natural born Citizen" as such.
The position is reduced to absurdity. In this scenario, even a child born on US soil of two US citizen parents is ineligible to run for President.
They simply didn’t intend this level of exclusion. All children born on US soil were eligible to run for President, and per act of the First Congress of the United States, they specified that all children born of US citizens abroad were to be considered as natural born citizens (and therefore eligible to run for President) as well.
It would’ve even been possible for a person to be born of foreign parents on US soil, or of US parents on foreign soil, to go and live overseas for the first fifty years of his life, then return to a United States he had never known, and be elected to President at age 64. Even if you don’t agree with the first part of that, the latter part - that a natural born citizen could live abroad for the first fifty years of his life, and then be elected President - is indisputable. And yet such a person would have spent an entire lifetime living as a Frenchman, or an Englishman, or whatever.
It just wasn’t intended to be an airtight system. It was merely one protection.
The rest of it, most of it in fact, was up to having an citizenry intelligent enough to decide whether or not electing that particular person was a good idea.
The power to govern was supposed to derive from the people, and they were responsible for choosing the leader.
A prime example of the issues surrounding dual nationals.
Dual nationals are "citizens," but they are not "natural born Citizens," naturally that would be unnatural.
B.t.w. My youngest child, born in the U.S. is not a "natural born Citizen" even though I'm a natural born Citizen myself.
They intended to exclude those born with foreign allegiance post grandfather clause. Makes sense too, from a military perspective.
Frankly, from what I've read of Leo's stuff, he's cracked.
Minor v. Happersett doesn't say what he claims it says. Read it for yourself, carefully, taking notes of every point, and thinking through what they actually say, without referring back to Leo's take on what they say.
Leo is relying on having a law license for authority. But any intelligent person can read these cases for himself or herself, and see what they say. Granted, it takes some work to sort through the arguments.
And they simply don't say what he claims. In fact, Minor v. Happersett not only doesn't say what he claims it says, it clearly indicates that the First Congress intended for all children born abroad of US citizen parents to be considered as natural born citizens.
Since the ONLY thing natural born citizens can do that mere citizens can't is run for President, it's clear that the First Congress, many of whom were literally the same Founding Fathers who developed the Constitution, intended that all children born abroad of US citizen parents should have the right to run for President.
That alone invalidates contention that in order to run for President you must be born on US soil of two US citizen parents. It doesn't include Obama's case, but tell me: How often did people travel in those days? Don't you think a lot of the children born abroad of US citizen parents would have grown up in those foreign countries and only later moved to the United States?
And don't you think that most children of two alien parents, born on US soil, would have been far more American than they were German, or whatever? In fact, many or most of them would probably have been more "American" than the kids born abroad of US citizens.
While the Founding Fathers were undoubtedly aware of Vattel, he was Swiss. The French adopted his approach. The British didn't. We don't have a Swiss/French heritage in this country; our heritage derives from Britain, as we were colonies of Great Britain up to the time of independence.
In fact, all thirteen of the original colonies were colonies of Great Britain, and at the time of independence, had been for - in the minimum case - forty-two years.
"By 1776 about 85% of the white population was of English, Irish, Scottish or Welsh descent, with 9% of German origin and 4% Dutch."
Notice what's present here? And what's missing?
Since the LAST of the thirteen original colonies was established as British fifty-three years prior to the framing of the Constitution, there may not have been anyone at the Constitutional Convention who could even remember a time before the establishment of the original thirteen colonies under British rule.
And the French control all seems to have been to the west and north of those thirteen colonies. An entire other land.
So our entire heritage, founded upon those thirteen quite thoroughly British colonies, came from the UK. Whatever Swiss and French citizenry may have been among us, it was less than 3%.
And there seems to be very little actual evidence in any of the literature I've read (once you get past Donofrio's and Apuzzo's blogs) that the Founding Fathers, while at least some of them were well aware of the Swissman's work, relied on his approach to citizenship - and plenty of evidence that they relied instead upon English common law, which (in the words of James Madison, the "Father of the Constitution," "referred citizenship to the place of birth."
Without reference to the citizenship of the parents, and with the exception of also extending natural born status to the children born abroad of British subjects.
Again, the "natural born" clause was intended as a partial protection. It was never intended to be a Fort Knox against any kind of foreign influence.
Oh, and one more thing:
Your child is most certainly eligible to run for President.
Vattel tells us a nation cannot perpetuate itself unless its citizens are born from citizens.
Makes sense to me..it only makes nonsense to Obama supporters.
Okay, I’ll grant the point. However, I really don’t see any significant evidence that the Founding Fathers relied on Vattel regarding citizenship, and significant evidence that they relied on English common law.
I also don't know for a fact that unicorns don't exist.
If you wish to assert that there was constitutional objection to the provision, the burden of proof is yours. Unless and until you can do that, any argument for unconstitutionality is based on precisely two things: speculation and silence.
Do you agree with this statement?
“In treating the right to security, we have shown that nature gives men a right to employ force, when it is necessary for their defense and for the preservation of their rights.”
Nature gives men a right to employ force, when it is necessary for their defense and for the preservation of their rights.
Yes, I agree to that, as long as the rights are real and not imagined. The right to self-defense is particularly important. And in a national sense, we as a nation have the right to self defense.
On the other hand, we do not have the right to take an army and invade Canada just because we want some Lebensraum. And if we do, the Canadian people have every right to oppose us with force of arms, because they are then acting in their own self-defense.
Not that I expect us to invade Canada. But you get the point.
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