Replies

Not an NBC???? I suggest a more careful reading of the 14th amendment is in order. “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws....”

NBC is a convenient boogieman for dimwits and loons...

I don’t see what that 14th Amendment clause has to do with anything.

FWIW I think he is eligible, else Obama would have been thrown out in one of these court cases, just don’t see how the 14th is relevant.

RE: 14th Amendment

Even this does not get specific enough regarding the term “Natural Born”. The 14th amendment only talks about who is a citizen, NOT who is a natural born citizen.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.

I stridently disagree that this sentence provides legal grounds for considering children, born to illegal immigrants on U. S. soil, automatically U. S. Citizens.

Why?

The framers of this sentence realized that there were people on our soil who were not subject to "the jurisdiction thereof".

Translation: Not everyone here is under our government's jurisdiction. Illegal immigrants are one such segment.

Except where foreign nationals break our civil laws, they are not under our jurisdiction.

Foreign nationals remain under the jurisdiction of their home nations. Those foreign nations have laws, their own constitution under whose jurisdiction those folks remain.

People vacationing here, people who have come here illegally, are considered to be here on a temporary basis. They are still citizens of other nations, under that nation's jurisdiction, not under ours.

Mexico tips this off on a regular basis, as it demands it's citizens be treated humanely. "These are our citizens, and we demand they be treated in accordance with our laws, not yours." They even claim this when their citizens have committed murder and other high crimes.

The Matricular indentification card pruduced by foreign consulates in the U. S., is another acknowledgement that these are foreign citizens which remain under their home nation's jurisdiction.

Another test is this. We can't all of a sudden across the board refuse to let citizens of France return home. Actually we could, but there would have to be a national security or some other type event, or in short order our government would be over-ruled because these people are not commonly recognized to be under the jurisdiction of the United States. We cannot arbutrarily detain them. Why? Because they ARE NOT under our jurisdiction.

The Supreme Court made it clear in 1898 that the 14th amendment does NOT define natural-born citizenship ... and for good reason, under the equal protection clause, it would have to make naturalized citizens in to natural-born citizens. The court said in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark:

In Minor v. Happersett, Chief Justice Waite, when construing, in behalf of the court, the very provision of the Fourteenth Amendment now in question, said: "The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that."

The Minor court said: "At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners."

This is a verbatim match of the Law of Definitions decision that says: "The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens."

The Law of Nations is even more specific, and its reasoning has been cited in other Supreme Court cases such as The Venus, Shanks v. Dupont and Inglis v. Sailors Snug Harbour: "children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights. ... The country of the fathers is therefore that of the children; and these become true citizens merely by their tacit consent."

This means the fathers must be citizens prior to the birth of their children before they can be considered natural-born citizens. IIUC, Jindal's father (like Obama's) was not a citizen at the time that Jindal was born.

Not an NBC???? I suggest a more careful reading of the 14th amendment is in order. “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws....”

Yes, yes, it makes them citizens at birth, but not "Natural born citizens." If it did, the Supreme court would not have said this seven years later:

"The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens."

The 14th amendment says EXPLICITLY who shall be "citizens", but as the Supreme Court points out, it DOES NOT SAY who shall be "natural born" citizens. Ergo, 14th amendment citizens are not the same thing as "natural born" citizens.

Simple, and irrefutable.

Read the qualifications for president. A natural born citizen according to the Supreme Court 1875 is one born of to American Citizens.