Is Bobby Jindal Eligible To Become President If He Was Born Before Parents Were Naturalized?

[Retired Intelligence Officer]

I need some help on this. I was reading where Bobby Jindal was born to immigrants here on visas. If he was born in Baton Rouge before they became naturalized citizens, wouldn't that make him ineligible to become President? I am in a heated argument at another website over this and I need answers to this controversy. Any help would be appreciated.

R.I.O.

[Tublecane]

“If ‘soil’ babies born to foreigners are US citizens at birth as you state, then why as of the 1892 was the US government still classifying these ‘soil’ babies as foreigners at birth?”

I’d argue that it’s because in 1892 counting the children of foreigners as citizens, though plainly demanded by the 14th amendment, had apparently not yet become common knowledge. Or perhaps that particular person simply chose to ignore it. In any case, things definitely changed with the Wong Kim Ark case, as you know. That was a short 6 years later, in 1898, as you also know.

Which makes me wonder why you brought up the random guy compiling statistical data in some random year in the first place. Who has more weight, SCOTUS or Joe Census?

[Tublecane]

“You would be subject to their law while in that nation. You could be drafted.

This is not acceptable for the President and Commander-in-Chief of the US military.”

First of all, being subject to the laws of other nations has no bearing on whether you are also subject to U.S. law. For instance, U.S. citizens can travel to foreign countries, be subject to their laws while there, and never be in doubt as to whether their citizenship status has changed.

Secondly, that’s the big concern? That the Dutch army will draft our president? Thereby...what? Leaving us without a commander in chief and therefore susceptible to invasion? Who cares? We’d just tell them to go suck a lemon.

[Tublecane]

“They were legal residents, which is sufficent for Jindhal to be a citizen at birth, aka natural-born citizen”

I don’t even believe they’d have to be legal. Illegals can have so-called “anchor babies,” which are considered citizens.

[murron]

You are a smart-aleck, maam. I have been following this thread and have seen your sarcastic remarks. I have one point of view and you have another. As usual, the ones whose points of view have the least facts behind them have to resort to insults and snide remarks. Your posts have been rambling and non-sensical. If you knew the difference between native and natural, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

[Red Steel]

Jindal has poo poo’ed any idea of him running for president on Hannity as of about 2 minute ago. “There are plenty of Republicans running for President in 2012.”

[patlin]

1884 SCOTUS upholding the language of the 14th and declaring it is Constitutionally defined as:

"[t]he phrase, 'subject to its jurisdiction' was intended to exclude from its operation children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States."

Gray quoted the above holding in WKA, however he did a chop job on it by neglecting to quote the entire holding, that he himself wrote, eliminating the last past wherein it states "and citizen or subjects of foreign states", thus he tried to make a newly qualified path to citizenship. Gray wrote the above deciding opinion in 1884 in which the entire court(including dissenters) unanimously adopted the above language as the constitutional definition of "subject to the jurisdiction". So you are just flat out wrong. When one travels to another country, they are by the laws of nations & international law, subject to the laws of that nation. They, however, are NOT subject to its political jurisdiction. IOW, the US can not force a foreign national residing in the US, here temporarily or traveling through the nation to serve it politically such as force the individual into military service.

[Tublecane]

“Oh, your a google graduate! Good for you, I just hope you didn’t pay too much for your google diploma.”

I mention google because it’s the easiest of means available (children of 3, maybe under, being able to use it effectively) of collecting information. If you’re not even willing to exploit that to prevent sticking your foot in your mouth, there’s not much to be said of your research skills.

“I’ll stick to the history books that actually wrote the truth.”

I could reference countless books demonstrating the founders considered themselves Englishmen (well, at least the ones that actually were transplanted Englishmen; natives, blacks, Dutch, French, etc. naturally might not have seen it that way) with claims to the traditional “rights of Englishmen.” I enjoy “The Lamp of Experience: Whig History and the Intellectual Origins of the American Revolution” by Trevor Colbourn and “The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution” by Bernard Bailyn. But no need to dig up those particular books. The concept is veritably everwhere, even in revisionist works. So omnipresent that ignorant little google is well aware of it.

How you’ve managed to miss and/or ignore it is beyond me. It’s nigh-impossible to understand much of the Declaration and the Constitution, to say nothing of mountains of other documents, without this understanding. You don’t have to agree with it, of course, but I’d think you’d at least address it, rather than sticking your fingers in your ears, humming “mmmm, mmmm, mmmm, I don’t hear you.” Doesn’t speak well of the potential benefit of arguing with you.

“You know, those dusty text books that were actually written by those old dead male & female patriots who actually lived during the revolution.”

Quotes from the founding fathers are brim with shout outs to the “rights of Englishmen” and praise for the common law, if you’d read them:

Adams: “the liberty, the unalienable and indefeasible rights of man, the honor and dignity of human nature...and the universal happiness of individuals, were never so skillfully and successfully consulted as in that most excellent monument of human art, the Common Law of England.”

Jefferson: “Saxon ancestors left their native wilds and woods in the North of Europe, had possessed themselves of the island of Britain” and established “that system of laws [i.e. the common law] which has so long been the glory and protection of that country.”

A glory which disappeared following the imposition of feudalism by William the Conqueror, according to Jefferson, came back in trickles with the various constitutional acts, and was to come back in full force, if he got his way, in the colonies. Indeed, his vaunted universal humn rights, as expressed in the opening of the Declaration, were obviously but the rights of Englishmen extended to all humanity.

That phrase, by the way, “expatriated men,” which you seem to think implies they weren’t at all British anymore, means no more than a phrase which I use, namely “transplanted Englishmen.”

“You know, those dead people that you all like to dismiss because they didn’t actually know what they were fighting for.”

I dismiss the figments of your imagination, not the actual people.

[jamese777]

Gray quoted the above holding in WKA, however he did a chop job on it by neglecting to quote the entire holding, that he himself wrote, eliminating the last past wherein it states “and citizen or subjects of foreign states”, thus he tried to make a newly qualified path to citizenship. Gray wrote the above deciding opinion in 1884 in which the entire court(including dissenters) unanimously adopted the above language as the constitutional definition of “subject to the jurisdiction”. So you are just flat out wrong. When one travels to another country, they are by the laws of nations & international law, subject to the laws of that nation. They, however, are NOT subject to its political jurisdiction. IOW, the US can not force a foreign national residing in the US, here temporarily or traveling through the nation to serve it politically such as force the individual into military service.

---

Since we don’t have a draft, the US doesn’t force anyone into military service, however non-citizens do serve in the US military and non-citizens can get expedited paths to naturalized citizenship BY serving in the US military. There have even been cases of illegal aliens serving in the US military.
Anyone without diplomatic immunity or a member of a foreign occupying military is subject to the jurisdiction of US law, that is how we can imprison foreigners who commit crimes in our country.

In one of the strangest cases, the son of Somali warlord Mohammed Farrah Aidid of “Black Hawk Down” fame was a United States Marine.

Another unusual case, the grandson of illegal aliens, Alberto Gonzales became the US’s chief law enforcement officer as Attorney General in the Bush administration.

[Tublecane]

“So what made the British-Americans free?”

Common law. Also, various concessions from the monarchy, called constitutional law. Which is often indistiguishable from common law, as it was inspired by and upheld by common law.

“were they called subjects & not citizens if as you say they were free?”

The colonists, you mean? Well, as we all know they didn’t have the sort of privileges possessed by the native British. Couldn’t send representatives to parliament, for instance. Many accepted it as a natural outgrowth of the betrayal of age-old prerogatives by William the Conqueror, the Tudors, the Stuarts, the Hanoverians, or whomever you put the blame on.

To some, Jefferson included, colonists had been unjustly tricked into accepting the authority of the crown. The idea being that there was a window where fleers were to be free, but they had been reenslaved by the unilateral actions of the tyrannical monarchy. In any case, the rationale for their re-liberation was a call back to the liberties they had enjoyed in the pre-Stuart, Tudor, William-ite, or whatever era.

“What was the political bond that was dissolved?”

The bond to Great Britain. The British empire. The crown. Whatever you want to call it.

“Hint...it wasn’t English common law”

What was it, then? “The Law of Nations”? No, that didn’t work in all the other countries that abided them. abstract reason? No. This was not the French revolution.

“a law that confers on a person a perpetual allegiance to a king without consent of that individual person”

Hate to break it to you, but the U.S. Constitution basically does just that. You can always renounce your ties and flee, but you could do that back in the day, too. Civil society is impossible without bidning children to the system without their consent. Anyone who takes popular sovereignty seriously must be an anarchist and nothing less.

[Tublecane]

“He wasn’t promoting it as a guide for US law, he promoted quite the opposite.”

I wasn’t just interpreting what was said, but actively disagreeing with it. Blackstone absolutely has been used as a guide, if not to U.S. law than to the pre-history of U.S. law. Why else would court decisions on the very concept we’re debating here, namely citizenship, reference it?

Many of the founders explicitly downplayed Blackstone. Jefferson, for instance, rejected it as a product of an age long past the true common law. But since he placed that age back to the time before William the Conqueror, I’d call his views a special case. But his name is popular enough in documents from the founding era that it’s foolishness to write it off altogether.

[WOSG]

“Yes, I understand. You still think we are under British rule.”

Au contraire!

I have been asserting throughout the supremacy of our constitution and our statutory definitions of citizenship; rather its the birthers who use vague emanations derived from common law, foreign sources, and judicial activists to ‘define’ natural-born citizen.

In fact, there is nothing to ‘define’ in ‘natural-born citizen’ - it is a term of art meaning no more and no less than those who acquire citizenship at birth. That birthright citizenship in turn is defined in our 14th amendment and in US code.

The only reason to bring in Blackstone is to show that our language, our English language, was used for these terms, and the meaning is plain and consistent in all contexts in which it is used throughout our legal history.

Alas, only the witless birthers seem to unable to comprehend the simple truth about what ‘natural-born’ really means, digging up and distorting as many obscure references as possible to evade the simple, basic truth of the matter.

Along the way, they try to smear and muddy the waters. No, the issue is NOT whether we are under “British rule” which of course we are not. The issue is whether you accept the fact that ‘natural-born citizen’ and ‘citizen at time of birth’ are one and the same thing.

Not a single quote you have given, and not a single quote on this thread or any thread on this topic has ever disagreed with the above equivalence of ‘natural-born citizen’ and ‘citizen at birth’. Not a single quote says “these are citizens at birth, but are not natural-born citizens” - they don’t because the category is mythical.

[patlin]

I’d argue that it’s because in 1892 counting the children of foreigners as citizens, though plainly demanded by the 14th amendment....

You are not getting away that easy because as YOU & ALL OTHER DRONES have repeatedly stated that soil of birth WAS the common knowledge of acceptance defining citizenship. Talk about double speak. You have officially won the AWARD( http://www.bukisa.com/articles/250875_the-doublespeak-campaign-the-doublespeak-award-the-orwell-award-and-the-ncte ):

And 'thank you' for also agreeing that jus soli was NOT common law known by all, thus it could not have been our common law.

[patlin]

I have one point of view and you have another...

I have one point of view and you have another know the law as it was adopted by the founders.

there, fixed it for ya

[Tublecane]

“’[t]he phrase, “subject to its jurisdiction “ was intended to exclude from its operation children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States.’ The Elk case held that the 14th was infact constitutional & even the dissenting Justices in Elk agreed with this. Sorry, but you are just miserably blinded by your shiney google diploma.”

Firstly, Ark, as you very well know, does not take that position. Secondly, if that’s what the framers intended, they did an awful job of it. Secondly, diplomats and ministers of foreign nations are not fully subject to U.S. law, yes. But regular foreign nationals, obviously, are. I know this because they can be found, in spades, in U.S. prisons. No one save wacky birthers argue otherwise.

If the framers of the 14th amendment wanted to exclude citizens of foreign nations altogether, they should have said so. In order to produce its language, such theoretical framers either were too lazy, assumed too much, or simply didn’t see the potential controversy. Unfortunately, a general intent to exclude dual loyalties is not law. The actual words they used are, and those words confer citizenship status at birth to the children of foreign nationals who are somehow immune to U.S. law.

[Tublecane]

“who are somehow immune to U.S. law.”

Sorry, that should be: “who are somehow NOT immune to U.S. law.”

By the way, about that “shiney google diploma,” does anyone here seriously believe patlin gets his quotes from anywhere but the internet? Does anyone believe he does not pull them either from previous birther posts or from any of the multitudinous birther sites? You can do so, of course, the long way. That is, using links instead of google. However, people in glass houses still oughtn’t throw stones.

[WOSG]

WKA and Elg rulings were based on the Constitution’s 14th Amendment and our US laws.

Our system of laws is based on our Constitution and real laws written by Congress. The opinion of foreighners like Vattel is irrelevent, especially when it was written prior to all US laws and Constitutional provisions. To assert he means anything is wrong and anti-Constitutional. I thought we were all constitutionalists on this forum.

Elg was not a ‘natural-born citizen’ because of what Vattel said ... Elg was a ‘natural-born citizen’ because SHE WAS A CITIZEN AT THE TIME OF HER BIRTH. The IMPORTANCE of the court stating this in her case and not WKA was NOT due to status of her parents, but because of the PARTICULAR NATURE OF WHETHER CITIZENSHIP COULD BE LOST DUE TO TAKING ON ANOTHER CITIZENSHIP. Naturalized citizens can lose citizenship in ways that natural-born citizens cannot. Natural-born citizens can ONLY lose their citizenship by renouncing explicitly US citizenship. THAT IS ALL!

The US hardly ‘frowns’ upon dual citizenship when in our day we make it easy to keep both.

Every statement and the conclusion in WKA and Elg is consistent with the simple and plain rule that “natural-born citizen” and “citizen at birth” are ONE AND THE SAME.

[WOSG]

Jindal has poo poo’ed any idea of him running for president on Hannity as of about 2 minute ago. “There are plenty of Republicans running for President in 2012.”

All those fearing a danged furrrigner (who just happens to be a US citizen his whole life) would be our next President can breathe easy. Birtherism is like a Seinfeld show - it's all about NOTHING! Still, I hope Jindhal joins the crowd.

[Tublecane]

“What - only considered? The 1790 Naturalization Act was on very shaky ground about someone born overseas to be only ‘considered’ to be an NBC.”

Consider: “To think or deem to be; regard as.”

Your quibbling over the word “consider” I deem sufficient grounds not to listen to you anymore.

[Tublecane]

“There are laws by man that are called ‘Positive Laws’ and there are ‘Natural Laws’ that are set by God to men.”

...Except to say this. Yes, I too have read Aristotle. Let me fill you in on a little something: the Constitution is positive law. That is, there is no United States of America without positive law. Therefore, there are no U.S. citizens save via positive law!

I cannot believe anyone holds otherwise. What, do you think God wrote our constitution?

[Lower55]

“You are a natural-born citizen of the US if you were born in the US to residents who are not citizens.”

Sorry. Not buying it. The courts can say what they want. They are political. The constitution says what it says. I defer to the constitution.

Natural born Citizens aren’t made by courts or statutes. They are made by citizen parents on US soil.