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To: SvenMagnussen
SCOTUS does not and will not recognize various types of U.S. Citizenship.

Firstly, the sentence you quoted in my essay was not about the classes of citizenship that US law may or may not recognize. It was about the ontological categories of citizenship used to define the semantic space of citizenship applicable to any and all countries. It was presented very early in the document as an aid to understanding historical and legal texts that use those terms in discussing citizenship.

Secondly, the fact that US law requires all citizens to be treated exactly the same is a completely separate issue from whether or not different conceptual classes of citizenship exist in peoples's minds, and whether US law will use each one in different cases in order to determine whether or not someone is or is not a citizen. There is more than one way to qualify as a citizen. How one does so is a separate issue from the privileges and immunities that citizenship bestows.

US courts absolutely will use jus sanginuis but not jus soli to rule that someone is a citizen. They have done so. And they will also use jus soli but not jus sanguinis to rule someone else to be a citizen in a different case. They have done that, too. And in Minor vs. Happersett, they used both principles to rule that someone was not just a citizen, but a natural born citizen.

The reasons or principles by which citizenship are legally determined is a completely separate issue from the privileges and immunities provided by citizenship. You are almost correct that US law recognizes no differences whatsoever between the citizenship of one person versus that of another as far as the privileges and immunities of citizenshp are concerned, regardless of the principles by which a person's citizenship was acquired. The one exception is eligibility to be President. The courts have no choice on that: It's a Constitutional requirement. And Constitutional requirements cannot, by definition, be Unconstitutional.

Either you are a citizen of the U.S. or you are not. Schneider v. Rusk, 377 U.S. 163 (1964), was a United States Supreme Court case which invalidated a law that treated naturalized and native-born citizens differentially under the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment.

Federal and state laws can be invalidated for such reasons. Constitutional prohibitions cannot.

When discussing rights of US citizenship, SCOTUS will acknowledge the manner a person acquired his/her citizenship. For example, the WKA case held he was a citizen of the U.S. and acquired his citizenship as a Natural born citizen would acquire his citizenship. In other words, WKA’s US citizenship was of the same dignity and co-extensive with the rights of any other Natural born citizen.

There is no statement in Wong Kim Ark that states that someone born in the US to alien (permanent resident) parents is a natural born citizen eligible to President. If that's false, it should be easy to prove. Please provide the exact words from the majority opinion that say what you claim.

No person has a right to be classified as a Statutory citizen, Naturalized citizen, Native born or Natural born citizen. See 22 U.S. (9 Wheat.) at 827-28, “[The naturalized citizen] is distinguishable in nothing from a native citizen, except so far as the constitution makes the distinction. The law makes none.”

By "the law," the Court meant Congressional statutes. But it acknowledged that the Constitution does make such a distinction by using the phrase "except so far as the constitution makes the distinction." Which it in fact does, as all can easily see by reading Article II, Section 1, Clause 5.

Natural born citizenship status is undefined and will remain undefined until a Constitutional Amendment is passed.

The Constitution cannot define that term without creating a logical contradiction, as my essay makes clear. But the Supreme Court can. And did, in Minor vs. Happersett, as my essay also makes clear.

35 posted on 01/31/2012 9:21:33 PM PST by sourcery (If true=false, then there would be no constraints on what is possible. Hence, the world exists.)
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To: sourcery
"And in Minor vs. Happersett, they used both principles to rule that someone was not just a citizen, but a natural born citizen."

The Ruling in MvH concerned state's rights as it pertained to voter registration. The conversation about natural born citizenship in MvH was orbiter dictum.

"You are almost exactly correct that US law recognizes no differences whatsoever between the citizenship of one person versus that of another as far as the privileges and immunities of citizenshp are concerned, regardless of the principles by which a person's citizenship was acquired. The one exception is eligibility to be President. The courts have no choice on that: It's a Constitutional requirement." (fixed it)

"But it acknowledged that the Constitution does make such a distinction by using the phrase 'except so far as the constitution makes the distinction.'"

The Congress is Constitutionally mandated to define the naturalization process. The 14th Amendment defines who is a citizen without going through the naturalization process. The classification "Natural born citizen" is the only specific Constitutional citizenship status available and it is undefined. Consequently, only a Constitutional Amendment can define the term.
40 posted on 02/01/2012 3:23:25 AM PST by SvenMagnussen (What would MacGyver do?)
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To: sourcery
Thanks for taking the time and effort to write your essay and this response.

This post and your essay are clear and detailed should someone want to understand this issue more fully.

Interesting how we humans are our own destructive agents of entropy, choosing to create disorder from order by diluting the purity of the strict rules and definitions that benefit and protect us when they get in the way of our whims of the moment.

Franklin warned us when he said "A Republic, if you can keep it."

99 posted on 04/10/2014 8:39:19 AM PDT by GBA (Here in the Matrix, life is but a dream.)
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