Oh, so that's why Wong Kim Ark lost his case and was denied citizenship by the Supreme Court! Because there were Congressional statutes at the time—and even a treaty with China‐that prohibited the children of Chinese nationals from becoming US citizens!
You're so brilliant, Kansas58. You have opened my eyes so that I can finally understand why the Supreme Court decided than Wong Kim Ark was not a citizen, in spite of what the 14th Amendment says. The silly Amendment was overruled by Congressional statute. How obvious it should have been.
Legislation does not trump the Constitution, however, and it’s there that your argument falls down.
The Constitutional term of art “natural-born citizen” is not a legislative construct and cannot be, it is a common law understanding based upon natural law, and one that has never had any bearing upon anything other than eligibility to the office of President, or Vice President as he or she must be Constitutionally eligible to serve in the capacity of President.
The only attempt you’ll ever find to legislate anything pertaining to natural-born citizenship will have occurred in 1790, via an Act which was itself stricken down and amended to remove any reference to natural-born, in 1795. The Legislative branch recognized their Constitutional inability to legislate additional meaning to the Constitutional term of art. Their Constitutional role is restricted to naturalization, regarding citizenship.
As a result, whatever was the intended meaning of “natural-born citizen” upon the ratification of that Constitution, remains the meaning today. The only conclusion that can be honestly reached is that the eligibility of Barack Hussein Obama is in doubt. The strength of historical citation and Supreme Court decisions rests more upon the strict interpretation of the term than the liberal one you tout.
If we accept your view, then Congress can legislate away every freedom guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. Indeed, they can legislate away the entire US Constitution, and replace it with whatever they like. Legislation trumps everything, after all.
Your statements on this matter are repulsive and un-American. Natural law cannot be legislated into non-existence. Congress can no more change the inalienable and intrinsic nature of man, than they can repeal the law of gravity.
If you'd ever really learned anything from American history, you'd understand that the American Revolution was fought over these very concepts, and that our Constitution enshrined and codified these ideas into a framework for organizing a society of free people for the very first time in human history.
The point you continually miss in these conversations, is that the Framers recognized the inherent differences between the various conditions of citizenship. They knew that barring the presidency to all except those who were born on American soil, to two US citizen parents, was the strongest insurance they could impose against someone of divided loyalties assuming control of that office.
That is the entire simplicity of the Natural Born Citizen clause.
When the 14th Amendment was written with the natural born terminology, the term was borrowed from Britain's Natural Law. Under the concept of Natural Law, a citizen's status is determined at birth by the citizen status of the parents. Under natural law, 2/3rds of a child's citizen status is derived from the status of the father with the remaining 1/3rd coming from the mother. IMO, this was the original intent of the 14th Amendment. However, the intent and the actual meaning has been muddied by the numerous discussions and interpretations from everyone's brother, sister amd dog.
You are correct when you say However, Congressional Legislation has frequently changed the requirements necessary, to obtain birthright citizenship. Legislation trumps Common Law. Legislation trumps Natural Law. Legislation trumps the Law of Nations. I don't know what you mean by the last statement.
Here you go, for the 540,205,101st time on this topic:
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.
They excepted Citizens of the United States at the time of adoption of the Constitution because otherwise there would have been no one to be president.
We had just finished winning our independence from a country called England—The War for Independence/The Damned Rebellion—and many of the new Americans were either former British subjects or born in England.
For example, Alexander Hamilton was born in Barbados. It is unclear where Obama was born, or what his real name is, and his likely father was a British citizen.
In 1860 we fought another war—the Civil War/War of Northern Aggression—and it was fought blah blah blah.
Why do we have to keep re-teaching American history and Con law? Try to keep up!
Atty. Van Irion to Appeal Judge Malihi’s Decision: Court Ignored Basic Rules of Interpretation
“The one point of good news from this ruling is that we have FINALLY gotten a court to rule on the merits of our argument. This may seem like a hollow victory, but it isn’t. Before this everyone that has brought a challenge against Obama’s eligibility has been dismissed on procedural grounds. Nothing is more devastating to the rule of law than a judicial branch that refuses to do its job. Before this case we had courts across the country telling Americans that they had no right to enforce the Constitution. That was absurdity at its most extreme. Liberty Legal Foundation found a case that we believed would at least get a ruling on the merits. We hate the ruling we got, but at least we got a ruling. Now we can appeal that ruling. The appeals process now will focus on the definition of “natural born citizen” rather than procedure for the first time since the issue of Obama’s eligibility was raise in 2008.”
http://obamareleaseyourrecords.blogspot.com/2012/02/attorney-van-irion-to-appeal-judge.html
“Congressional Legislation has frequently changed the requirements necessary, to obtain birthright citizenship.”
Correct. That’s why the following in Wong Kim Ark is FALSE.
“The same rule was in force in all the English Colonies upon this continent down to the time of the Declaration of Independence, and in the United States afterwards, and continued to prevail under the Constitution as originally established.”
You, yourself, just admitted that DIFFERENT rules/laws were in force at various times.
Aldo Mario Bellei (Rogers v Bellei) was a "citizen at birth" but lost his citizenship for failure to meet residency requirements. Since a "natural born citizen" has no residency requirements, a "citizen at birth" is obviously not the same thing as a "natural born citizen."
Learn what you are talking about.
Can I make a valid argument that ‘black’ is ‘white’ because each is a color?