Chin speaks of "a number of individuals born in the Canal Zone under U.S. jurisdiction ... even one claiming to be a birthright citizen under the Fourteenth Amendment" being deported. Presumably, they were the children of Panamanian or other non-US citizen parents. Chin does say that Congress and the courts didn't recognize children born in the Canal Zone to American parents as citizens from birth, but he doesn't say that children of American citizens born in the Canal Zone were actually deported.
Chin also notes that this reading was subject to question depending on how one read the statutes and what one meant by "limits and jurisdiction." If Congress had not acted, the courts may have ruled that children in McCain's situation were in fact citizens from birth. See Stephen E. Sach's companion article, Why John McCain Was a Citizen at Birth. Ironically, if McCain was born on Panamanian territory outside the Canal Zone, he would indeed have been a citizen from birth, according to Chin's reading -- which is pretty much the opposite from what many of us assumed at the time.
Thanks x. The more knowledgeable people and honest questioners respond, the closer to truth we'll come.
I, of course, said that Professor Chin was a Democrat, by which I meant that his analysis had several glaring omissions. As I pointed out, not mentioning the precedent so clearly established by Minor v. Happersett is about as clear a signal as a writer can provide, since any discussion of “Birthright citizenship” must dispense with Chief Justice Waite's clear collision with what seems an intentional misinterpretation that “Birthright” citizenship is equivalent to natural born citizenship. Since Waite, along with dozens of other justices, makes natural born citizenship “born on our soil of citizen parents,” then what is “Birthright citizenship.”?
Having seen a number of interpretations, what counts is that it is not defined in the Constitution or by precedent. Many claim, at odds with Minor, that a “Birthright citizen” is either a jus soli - of the soil - or jus sanguinis - of the blood implying citizen parents, but not both. That is not the law. A natural born citizen must satisfy both conditions, jus soli and jus sanguinis. That is why Justice Waite and Judge Bingham described the definition as "never doubted." After all, someone could be born on our soil to at least one alien parent, raised overseas, and may not even speak English, but be a "Birthright citizen." One may be born to citizen parents, overseas, raised overseas and have acquired allegiance to a foreign culture and laws, but be a "Birthright citizen". Marie Elg was born in New York to naturalized Swedish parents, but raised in Sweden. When she was twenty one she knew she wanted to make the U.S. her home, and our secretary of state didn't understand Minor v. Happersett.
Thanks to judicial review, and Chief Justice Hughes, our state department was informed that someone naturally born a citizen is always a citizen, unlike any other class of citizen. There are all sorts of laws governing the circumstance which cause a citizen to lose citizenship. No law can affect natural born citizenship. Since our State Department disagreed, Marie Elg's case went to our final appeals court and Marie Elg was admitted back into the U.S. from Sweden, and informed that if she chose, after 14 years residence and reaching the age of 35, she could run for for the presidency.
Thank you for the reference to the Stephen Sachs article. About the article let me first observe that it only confirms my argument that McCain's status was uncertain. While we are mostly concerned with Obama (and indirectly with Romney's grandfather, which argument seems to have been dealt with satisfactorily, Sachs thesis is that John McCain was born a statutory citizen, not a natural born citizen. I will read the details of Stephen Sachs article carefully, but wanted to respond to your thoughtful reply before it disappears into archives which, unlike Google’s Wayback Machine, will be forgotten, but not scrubbed or blocked.
As with Wong Kim Ark, which contains many irrelevant threads of argument, it is useful to look at Sach’s conclusion. “The balance of that evidence suggests that John McCain was a citizen at birth.” So, while I find some foggery in Sach’s argumentation, his disagreement is with Chin's assertion that McCain seems not to have been born a citizen at all, a question many have raised regarding Barack Obama, since Obama’s State Department records were “cauterized” in 2008 and the perpetrator, while a cooperating witness, acquired a bullet in his head while sitting in front of his church, rendering his citizenship status unverifiable.
Sach’s research into the labyrinth of citizenship statutes may be correct, but having been born a citizen by statute defines McCain as a naturalized citizen, and not eligible by Article II. Our framers certainly understood the capabilities of clever barristers, which is probably why they took Presidential eligibility requirements out of the hands of the legislature. The British didn't need to think much about jus sanguinis since it was built into their monarchial form of government. Our "king" need only have bloodlines from citizen parents, regardless of where they were born. The British required that their legislators (Parliament) consist only of natural born subjects, but Calvin's law made the foreign born children of British Subjects into natural born subjects. British common law was not U.S. common law, though Justice Gray of Wong Kim Ark, spent much of his decision writing about British law.
Just a quick read of Sach’s article reveals another bit of artifice which you will find in Larry Tribe and Ted Olson's work for the Obama campaign committee in their letter to the Resolution 511 hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee in April of 2008. Sach’s mentions the 1790 Naturalization Act and mention that it was superseded by the 1795 and 1802 Acts, but not that the 1790 Act explicitly removed the language of the 1790 Act, including the term natural born citizen. NBC never again appears in the U.S. Code (there may be a recent citation mentioned in a Leo Donofrio article, but not having read it yet, I'll stick with "never.") Sach’s conclusion could be interpreted by those so inclined as to clarify “limits and jurisdiction” as it applies to natural born citizens. Of course, Sach’s doesn't do that. He is only, and correctly, referring to citizens.
Neither McCain nor Obama are eligible until the court reinterprets Minor v. Happersett, which is why Tim Stanley and Carl Malamud were willing to put their reputations on the line to hide the truth by “mangling” citations to Minor v. Happersett. I suspect that every law school will follow the guidance of Professor Robert Berring, who subtly warned Tim Stanley and Carl Malamud at the Soros’ sponsored (one of the sponsors, as confirmed by Carl Malamud's "Law.gov" sign, Malamud being the Center for American Progress CIO) symposium, that he assigns his students the task of comparing the accuracy of the cases they acquire from the free sites, Justia, Findlaw, and others (Stanley founded both of them), to those obtained at the fee-for-service sites, Lexus and Westlaw. (Berkeley Law.Gov Workshop - Part 5, on YouTube) Of course Obama will find a way to reward Stanley and Malamud,but dishonesty and freedom conflict, so even they may someday be sorry. Were I still in the venture business, while it is about money, it is also about trust, and both Stanley and Malamud have shown that their ideals and probably their profits trump the law. A few still believe there is integrity in the law. Lawyers (Stanley graduated from Harvard Law about the time Obama was there) should be smart enough to construct convincing arguments without requiring that the foundations, the axioms, be altered to support their thesis.