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To: BuckeyeTexan
You would be wrong. I wanted to believe that Obama was not a natural-born citizen. I was a birther for a brief period of time. Then I came to my senses after thoroughly researching the issue.

Really? And what piece of information convinced you otherwise? You must have seen something different that I haven't yet seen. I would like to know what it is, because all my research has yielded the opposite result.

81 posted on 05/14/2015 2:47:41 PM PDT by DiogenesLamp
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To: DiogenesLamp
Really? And what piece of information convinced you otherwise? You must have seen something different that I haven't yet seen. I would like to know what it is, because all my research has yielded the opposite result.

I'd have to say that Rogers v. Bellei is what finally convinced me that it is more likely than not that statutory citizens at birth are natural-born citizens.

The Court cited Justice Gray's stipulation in Wong Kim Ark:

"But it [the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment] has not touched the acquisition of citizenship by being born abroad of American parents; and has left that subject to be regulated, as it had always been, by Congress, in the exercise of the power conferred by the Constitution to establish an uniform rule of naturalization."
In doing so the Court said:

Thus, at long last, there emerged an express constitutional definition of citizenship. But it was one restricted to the combination of three factors, each and all significant: birth in the United States, naturalization in the United States, and subjection to the jurisdiction of the United States. The definition obviously did not apply to any acquisition of citizenship by being born abroad of an American parent. That type, and any other not covered by the Fourteenth Amendment, was necessarily left to proper congressional action.

The Court has recognized the existence of this power. It has observed, "No alien has the slightest right to naturalization unless all statutory requirements are complied with . . . ." (snip) And the Court has specifically recognized the power of Congress not to grant a United States citizen the right to transmit citizenship by descent. 

In establishing a uniform rule of naturalization, Congress defines who requires naturalization and who does not. Granted, Congress can and has changed its collective mind over the years, but the Constitution implicitly gives Congress the right to do so.
102 posted on 05/14/2015 4:35:52 PM PDT by BuckeyeTexan (There are those that break and bend. I'm the other kind. ~Steve Earle)
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