Posted on 11/12/2010 4:53:42 PM PST by 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.
What’s your point. Does it make any difference, huh, dude???
Look, it’s a simple question, there’s no need for insults. As far as I can tell, none of you were arguing that Obama is ineligible because of his father’s nationality when he won his party’s nomination or before. Nothing you’ve said proves me wrong. Is it fair to say that three years ago, you didn’t believe what you’re now arguing?
You do understand that Obama didn’t produce a birth certificate until after Hillary conceded the nomination?? Most people weren’t too focused on him or his eligibility until it became clear he was hiding something.
“’natural law does not have force of law in the U.S.’
‘This is Communist bullshit. The Declaration of Independence states clearly that men have certain inalienable rights. That is natural law. Please stop lying and spreading Communist bullshit.’”
I hate to break it to you—you being an honest, pro-american, non-communist who should know better—but the Declaration of Independence does not have force of law in the U.S. Crack a history book, and you’ll see that it predates the existence of the U.S. by a good many years. A hair short of 13, to be precise.
Oh, sure, people will nickname it a “founding document,” though one wonders just how many states it founded. Two seperate systems governed the original states (namely, the Continental Congress and the confederated U.S.) before the Constitution was a gleam in James Madison’s eye. We can argue back and forth all day over whether there was a continuity between the systems under the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution. The constitutional convention was in fact a mini-revolution (or counter-revolution), its humble ambition to amend the Articles being a lie. But nevermind. There was at least the Continental Congress, and THAT body, my friend, is where one must look to find the Declaration useful.
If we name the Declaration a significant document in any but a historical or philosophical sense, we’d paint ourselves absurdists. Might as well deem the Magna Carta still in force. Or, heck, Solon’s laws. It gets tricky prior to Hamurabi’s code, though, so be careful.
“Anyone who points to the US Code to claim they are a born citizen is naturalized at birth.”
This includes 14th amendment babies how, exactly?
There's no way every single one of them was so distracted that they simply forgot that Obama was ineligible due to his Father's nationality, which was always public knowledge.
It bugs me, because these birthers are saying that their argument is clearly supported by the Constitution and hurl insults at anyone who disagrees, which is pretty arrogant considering none of them seemed to believe any of this three years ago.
“It makes perfect sense. See above.”
Here’s what’s above:
“The Constitution gives the Congress only the power to write laws of naturalization. Thus, anyone which must point to the US Code to prove their citizenship is pointing to a naturalization and is there fore a naturalized citizen...Anyone who points to the US Code to claim they are a born citizen is naturalized at birth.”
What you’re saying is that if a “code” or, say, the 14th amendment, intervenes to render a citizen at birth someone who—by the inexorable process of Nature—would never otherwise have been a citizen, that person has been “made natural.” Or, in other words, “naturalized.” Since “naturalization” has always and since the beginning of time meant the process whereby someone who wasn’t a citizen when they were born acquires citizenship, you can perhaps understand my incredulity, if not my pointing and laughing.
“Are people born in U.S. territories citizens?”
Yes. U.S. territory is “in the United States.”
“You should recall it well enough, you guys used it to argue against the eligibility of John McCain”
John McCain was not born in U.S. territory. Look it up.
“the Supreme Court held that ‘unincorporated territories’ were not part of the United States for constitutional purposes, WOSG.
This means that individuals born there to legal residents are citizens, but not natura-born.”
If by “legal residents” you mean non-U.S. citizens, then children born of them outside U.S. territory would be neither natural born citizens nor citizens.
“The Supreme Court would have ruled Wong Kim Ark a natural born if he was an NBC”
And SCOTUS in Dred Scott would have ruled blacks citizens if the sky had been cloudy that day. Also, cats would be tastey if they were made of ice cream.
Hey, I can spout nonsense too!
“’Jurisdiction’ refers to nationality, not who is ‘beyond the law.’ The definition was ‘changed’ by judicial and administrative fiat, not by legislation.”
Dump my imprecise terminology if you want. The fact remains, we agree that the “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” clause was intended to bar from citizenship those babies who, by the nature of their parents, would not legally, “politically,” or otherwise fall under the responsibility of the U.S. or have allegiance to the same. Such babies would be those born to the usual groups not expected to have local allegiance. Need I trot out the same old list? Okay, I will: diplomats, invading armies, native american tribes.
Here’s the thing. Despite what you say, legal and illegal aliens have no prima facie un-alliability. They do, in fact, have a capacity for allegiance, or, more precisely, a capacity for producing children with allegiance. They do for the same reason that they fall—unlike diplomats and barbarian hordes—within the legal responsibility of the U.S. government.
Don’t believe me? Check out Wong Kim Ark. Go ahead. Are his parents foreign nationals? Yes. Was their child born with split loyalties? Yes. Was he born a citizen? A thousand times, yes. There you have it. The child of non-citizen parents who have, according to shallow-minded folks, no jurisdictional allegiance to the U.S., nevertheless can birth a baby who does. Sorta knocks apart the argument that split-nationality babies aren’t born citizens, doesn’t it?
Oh, I know you’ll still say they can’t be NBCs. Still, they fly past the “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” test.
“It DOES NOT say that. It says that the baby was ‘as much a citizen as a NBC’ it DOES NOT say the baby was as much a NBC as a NBC.”
A distinction without a difference. The ONLY distinction between citizens is that natural born ones are the only ones who get to be president. Yes, naturalizated citizens become so by meeting certain conditions. But after the process is complete, they are no different than the rest of us in all non-presidential matters (unless they muffed up the naturalization process, but in that case they never really were citizens). Thus, to say soil babies and NBCs are equal without both being able to be president is meaningless.
I doubt most laypersons and politicians were aware of the true definition of natural born citizen. Second, there were Democrat politicians who deliberately made an effort to endorse McCain's eligibility on the basis of place of birth, glossing past the acknowledgment that he was born of citizen parents. It was a great way to deflect any attention on Obama to the unresolved place of birth issue, rather than his parentage. Once you do the research though, it's obvious Obama doesn't fit the Supreme Court's definition of NBC.
It doesn't says soil babies and NBCs are equal. Review the quote: "The child of an alien, if born in the country, is as much a citizen as the natural born child of a citizen, and by operation of the same principle." This says both persons are citizens but does not say that they are equal.
An apple is as much a piece of fruit as is a banana, but an apple is not a banana. The child of an alien is as much a citizen as natural born citizen, but the child of an alien is NOT an NBC. To extend this analogy, Obama is a fruit.
“You said you read Aristotle, yet you mocked me when I quoted him.”
If I mocked you, it was because he was irrelevant. Just as he was irrelevant when he popped up previously in the conversation. The distinction between man-made laws and the laws of nature has nothing to do with U.S. law. U.S. law is ALL man-made. The laws of nature and of nature’s God are for philosophers to sort out.
Likewise, ancient Greek law has little or nothing to do with modern U.S. law. If you had closely read founding literature, you’d know how, despite admiring the city-state system, they thoroughly HATED Athenian democracy. So, on both counts, I am free to mock the inclusion of Aristotle. Wake me up when he has something substantive to add.
“Want to moock our founding fathers too?”
If I did, at least I wouldn’t misrepresent their views. For instance, pretending the revolution was inspired by French-like abstractions and an amalgam of all the laws that had ever been passed in human history, instead of the traditional “rights of Englishmen” as claimed by transplanted Englishmen who found them in English common and constitutional law. The latter of which happens to be supported by actually studying the past.
The point of the following bibliography is beyond me. Do you wish to prove you’re literate? Well, merely listing books is no help with that. If it were, you would’ve paid attention when I did so.
“WOW, it seems even our founders were intrigued by ancient Roman & Greek history.”
I don’t know why you say “even.” Anyway, I knew that, as evidenced by a previous post which you probably didn’t read.
Also, bear in mind that, unlike with English history, colonial Americans did not think of themselves as studying their own history when they read the classics. The ancient world was a seperate world. Reading the classics in no way implies they admired and abided ancient citizenship standards, any more than they abided various other aspects of radical Athenian democracy. Which, once again, they hated.
“Well those and the history of ALL the other nations whose people settled in America and who’s laws & customs they needed to accomodate in order for a Federal Union of sovereign nation states to co-exist, let alone survive being conquered ever again...”
And on, and on, and on. Colonial America was a mosaic. A mixed salad, if you will. No particular foreign system of law dominated. Ben Franklin, Sam Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Otis, John Dickenson, and every other founder anyone’s ever heard of was just as likely to see themselves as descended from Greece, Rome, Holland, Africa, America itself, or the moon as the place which happened to claim dominion over them.
“England?” they ask, confusedly, “What’s that? Oh, yes, I think I recall. It had something or other to do with Saxons. Williams and Henrys lived there, right? Well, what of it?”
I don't even think constitutional experts were aware of it--then or now.
“’I also recognize that current federal laws controlling commerce that don’t exactly fit the intended meaning of ‘regulate’ are nonetheless constitutional. They violate the spirit but not the letter of the law. None but cranks, frankly, hold otherwise.’
‘So do you consider Justice Thomas a crank?’”
Let’s assume he’s opposed to laws that really, really don’t fit “regulate,” rather than merely “don’t exactly fit.”
“’No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution’
‘Go ahead, torture yourself....lol’”
I don’t know what you think you see in this excerpt, but I’m pretty sure it’s not what’s actually there.
The first time I saw it explained by a constitutional expert, I was dubious, but when I read the research and the SCOTUS decisions ... like I said, there's 'no doubt' ... Obama does not fit the definition of NBC.
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