Fox News Declares Ted Cruz Ineligible To Be POTUS Due To Birth In Canada [American Mother]

Actually, no.

Even if both parents are natural or native US citizens, and they while travelling abroad etc have a child, the child may not be a natural born US citizen by virtue of the country of birth.

Only persons abroad on Official US duty are provided that specific relief for a child born overseas in conjunction with that duty.

Simply travelling aboard is not included.

US Immigration laws cover these issues and you can dig in and find the citations if you want to....

Example, McCain was born to US parents who were serving in the Canal zone, so by virtue of that duty, John is a natural US citizen. My son was born in West Germany while I was stationed there, his birth is recorded by the US consulate and he is a natural and native born US citizen by virtue of the same duty as Adm. McCain.

Joe and Sally hanging out in Italy for the summer having a child is not the same.

Best;

Actually, McCain wasn’t born on a base. He was born in a Panamanian hospital.

You realize that was written before the US even exisited and has no bearing or authority in US law.

Please see my post #230 for a rebuttal of that erroneous assumption.

I am not sure if the laws at the time would make Cruz a “natural born citizen” for the purposes of eligibility for Presidency - any legal scholars here?

I have read and studied enough on this point that I think I can qualify to give as authoritative opinion as exists.

That almost everyone born on US soil is a natural born citizen (yes, that includes Obama) is SETTLED LAW. There is a very good reason why the US Supreme Court has steadfastly refused to review any of the Obama cases that have reached them. It's settled. Children born on US soil are natural born citizens. Their parents' citizenship DOES NOT MATTER.

Legally speaking, Ted Cruz's case is SLIGHTLY more iffy, as there does not seem to have ever been a clear and explicit decision. But the entire weight of legal opinion seems to be that "natural born citizen" is equivalent to "US citizen at or by birth."

Therefore it seems very, very likely that if Ted Cruz were to run and be elected President, he would be declared to meet the Constitutional qualification as well.

Or, to put it more simply: Yes, almost certainly, Ted Cruz is a natural born citizen.

Fox propaganda, who’d have thought it?

You are correct. What most people refuse to understand is that at the TIME the Constitution was signed there was NO dual citizenship at all. Not in Great Britain or in the new US. Sorry you all-inclusive people, but that is an absolute fact.

For the under-informed:

AFTER the US Constitution was ratified a law had to be created to deal with children born to US citizens traveling off of US soil. A law (Act) had to be CREATED. The first Act dealing with such allowed that a child born to a US citizen FATHER (I know men don’t have babies, so don’t be stupid) born abroad was a citizen BUT the child had to declare his/her allegiance at the age of 21 - because back then some countries claimed that ANY child born there (unless to an Ambassador) was a subject/citizen of that country. And back then if a alien woman married a citizen man, she took on his character (country). Later legislators changed the language to include that either/or/both parents being US citizens could pass US citizenship to the child. That was done for several reasons-won’t detail now. Keep on mind all of this was done well AFTER the Constitution was ratified. And that child born abroad would still be required to declare allegiance at 21 years of age.

The thing is that there was NO dual citizenship in the US back then. Technically there is none officially recognized now either. Look that up - it’s easy. Although the US does not officially recognize dual citizens, they do not actively discourage it either.

Consider the original wording in Article 2 only required the President “unless he now be a Citizen of one of the States, or hereafter be born a Citizen of the United States.” That was the exact wording. They felt it was not restrictive enough and so it was changed.

NONE of the post 1787 Acts or laws/amendments was ever intended to change the Article 2 requirement. In fact, it is easily found in the old literature of that time that there were only two types of US citizens, natural or created by statue.

Binney (2nd edition):
“THE ALIENIGENE
OF THE UNITED STATES.
IT does not, probably, occur to the American families
who are visiting Europe in great numbers, and remain-
ing there, frequently, for a year or more, that all their
children born in a foreign country, are ALIENS, and
when they return home, will return under all the disa-
bilities of aliens. Yet this is indisputably the case ; for
it is not worth while to consider the only exception to
this rule that exists under the laws of the United States,
viz., the case of a ‘child so born, whose parents were
citizens of the United States, on or before the 14th of
April, 1802.”

AND: “The state of the law in the United States is easily
deduced. -The notion that there is any common law
principle to naturalize the children born in foreign
countries, of native-born American father and mother,
father or mother, must be discarded. There is not and
never was any such common law principle. But the
common law principle of allegiance, was the law of all
the States at the time of the Revolution, and at the
adoption of the Constitution; and by that principle the
citizens of the United States are, with the exceptions
before mentioned, such only as are either born or made
so, born within the limits and under the urisdiction of
the United States, or naturalized by the authority of
law, either in one of the States before the Constitution,
or since that time, by virtue of an Act of the Congress
of the United States.”

The thing we must not lose sight of is the meaning at the time of the signing of the Constitution. That is what is important.

Acts have been passed to address children born to citizens abroad that give those children the “same rights” as a natural born citizen, but those rights are assigned through a legal statue, they are not naturally occurring. Again,

“citizens of the United States are, with the exceptions
before mentioned, such only as are either born or made
so, born within the limits and under the jurisdiction of
the United States, or naturalized by the authority of
law,”

I am sincerely doubtful that the U.S. Supreme Court would rule Cruz eligible.

You're right, the Supreme Court may not touch the issue unless some other court rules against Cruz along the way. My point is that no one is going to stop Ted Cruz from running for President on eligibility grounds - not the legislature and not the courts.

And the McCain case is different in another way — he was born in Panama, but it was a military base thing; it is somewhat reasonable to treat foreign American military bases as if they are “U.S. Soil”, just as you would treat the Embassy as being born on U.S. soil.

The real issue is that the PURPOSE of having the rule makes little sense in regards to some of these particular cases.

The idea was that they wanted people who grew up in the United States, not people who lived their lives in another country and would be swayed by that country.

And when the country was founded, it would be highly unlikely any woman would be “vacationing” in a different country and have their baby. You really didn’t travel that much.

Today, anybody can hope in a plane, and be around the world tomorrow. And be back the next day.

Did Cruz live any significant time in Canada? Then I would argue he is ineligible by the intent of the constitution.

But certainly if someone was on vacation and had a child, and then brought the child home at the end of the vacation, I’d say that the INTENT of the constitutional law is met.

I also do think the congress would have the right, within limits, to define the parameters of “natural born citizen”.

The problem I had with the Obama questions is this — suppose a woman is single, and has a baby through a sperm bank.

Does that child then have to prove the father was an american citizen to be eligible for President? Some here would argue yes — that BOTH parents must by American. I’m not so sure. I don’t see where the intent (that you don’t have parents who have divided loyalties) would be an issue if the father was unknown.

Imagine if Ronald Reagan, the day before he was sworn in, we found out his mother had actually had an affair with a foreign actor, and Reagan was HIS son. Would he have then been ineligible? I think not.

He didn't have to naturalize.

And that, my friend, should put a stop to this discussion. But it won't.

I don’t know if I buy the idea that parents must *both* be citizens.

Here it is: (emphasis added)

>>It is sufficient for everything we have now to consider that all children born of citizen parentS within the jurisdiction are themselves citizens.<<

Mccain.was not born on a base.

lol, you really are dense! You are the one subverting the Constitution! I'm the one defending it. How old are you?

"Section 1 of Article Two of the United States Constitution sets forth the eligibility requirements for serving as president of the United States:

“ No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

your child is a US citizen ....this kind of crappola has got to stop. It makes people look ridiculous AND it weakens any argument that might have been made against The One

At this point even an anchor baby could become president.

This wasn't made an issue for Bill Richardson when he ran for President.

Where does your citizenship come from?

Is it from your mother? Is it from your father?

Is it from the country where you are born?

Is your citizenship a statement of your legal residency? A statement of who claims jurisdiction over you and/or your resources?

Is citizenship a statement of your inner loyalty?

The highest standard, the definition that best combines all those possibilities and offers the best chance for legal and inner loyalty to the country, is that of being born in country to citizen parents.

It doesn't guarantee loyalty, nothing does, but it offers the best hope for that loyalty and no competing or potential legal claims to it.

If you wanted to start a nation in a hostile world after winning freedom from a powerful nation, what standard would you choose for the highest, most powerful single person in charge of that country? You'd choose the highest, most legally clean and pure standard possible.

If the Supreme Court wants to take on the issue of NBC and put forth a new definition then fine I’ll be happy to abide by it but the last time they took on the issue in 1870 (Minor vs Happerset) they ruled born in the US of two US citizen parents.

This is simply not true. Minor v Happersett had one or two sentences that might POSSIBLY have been relevant, and those sentences were interpreted by a later Supreme Court to mean that the Minor Court was NOT "committed to the view that all children born in the United States of citizens or subjects of foreign States were excluded from the operation of the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment."

The purpose 14th Amendment was to ensure equal application of the rule for who was and was not a citizen by birth, i.e., a natural born citizen.

So in essence, the later Court quoted Minor v Happersett to make a point that was AGAINST the two-citizen-parent claim, NOT in favor of it.

The case that actually established the existing precedent was US v Wong Kim Ark, in 1898. That precedent is that pretty much any child born on US soil is a natural born citizen. And that is settled law. No credible authorities on either side of the aisle give any credence to claims otherwise.

Canada does grant citizenship based on birth. A friend I grew up with was born in Montreal because her US parents were working there that year. Not only does she have a Canadian as well as a US passport, but her children, who have never been to Canada have Canadian passports.

No, it isn’t. See post 214 for details.

What's strange is that you are full of pronouncements yet lacking in any apparent historical knowledge of anything touching on these matters, even though, in the year around Barry's election, there was a great deal written right here in FR about every one of these things.

Asking questions you are yourself not willing to answer is a debating technique used to make it appear those you are addressing are unable to answer in a way detrimental to your case and, thus, that you must be correct.

It also preys on the ignorance of those who, perhaps, were not here during that time and are unaware of everything that had been discussed on these matters ad nauseum.

And it's a little misleading, in part, such as the "can they explain the other Presidents [sic] (ie NOT Obama) that didn't meet their Natural Born Citizen criteria?"

Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Adams, Jackson, and Harrison didn't meet the "natural born citizen" criteria because they were born before the founding, though they did meet the Constitutional requirements that specifically addressed this. Since then only Chester Arthur and Barry have been the only ones who have not; Arthur, because his father was still a Canadian citizen at the time of Chester's birth in the U.S.: and Barry, who has not demonstrated a U.S. birth in any but a belated, fraudulent manner, whose putative father was not at the time nor ever did become a U.S. citizen, and who, through his own words, declared himself to have been born abroad in Kenya to parents only one of which was a U.S. citizen at the time of his birth (he did this in the author's blurb he wrote for one of his books).

Fact is, that all the birther debate DID NOT STOP OBAMA.

Birthers still believe they're only one lawsuit away from Obama being dragged out of the White House in handcuffs, deported to Kenya and every action he took as president nullified.

Just as soon as Orly figures out how to properly file a brief.