Posted on 01/08/2013 3:15:17 PM PST by Seizethecarp
Ted Cruz may have the aura of a future presidential contender, but is he even eligible...?
The newly sworn-in Texas senator and rising Republican star was born in Canada, to a mother who was born in Delaware and Cuban father. Thats triggered a debate about whether hes eligible for the nations highest office...
While theres no legal precedent for Cruzs situation, most constitutional scholars surveyed by POLITICO believe the 42-year-old tea party sensation would be OK.
The problem is, no one knows what a natural born citizen is, agreed University of California, Davis law professor Gabriel Chin, who argued in 2008 that Sen. John McCain was not eligible to be president.
Advisers to Cruz a Harvard Law-educated appellate lawyer who has argued dozens of cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and knows a thing or two about constitutional law say that because his mother had U.S. citizenship at the time of his birth, it transferred to him on foreign soil.
Temple University law professor Peter Spiro said Cruz has a very strong argument that he is indeed natural born.
While the 14th Amendment to the Constitution grants citizenship to anyone born inside the U.S., children born to American citizens outside the country attain citizenship through a law passed by Congress, according to Spiro.
Hes a birthright citizen but his birthright citizenship derives from his parents, and the question is, does that fit with the definition of natural born citizen? added University of Pennsylvania law professor Kermit Roosevelt. I think it does.
Chin, who authored a lengthy analysis on McCains citizenship, agreed that Cruz most likely is eligible.
Even though only Cruzs mother was a citizen, there shouldnt be a problem because it appears she had lived in the United States for at least 10 years, Chin said.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Only reason I bring up this issue of “natural born” is that by allowing Obama to become POTUS twice, the powers that rule the country have made definition of “natural born” irrelevant.
Eligibility no longer a concern. If he needs a birth certificate, he can ask any of the millions of us with Photoshop to make him one. That’s what Obama did , so there is now precedent. “Not true,” you say? Prove me wrong.
I am placing that in nomination for Comment O'Year. (Well, at least so far.)
No, he's not eligible, and if the GOPe try to run him in the future sans a Supreme ruling saying he is, then he will lose. Same with Rubio, Haley and any other contenders that didn't have two citizen parents at birth.
We shouldn't have to worry about whose side you'll come down on if conflict arises between America and the country of origin of one (or more, in the case of 14th Amendment "Anchor" babies) of your parents.
Isn’t it ironic that this country with all its great promise was first weakened by a foreign organization, the UN, and then finished off by a possible foreigner as president, while Congress stood by, submissively?
And this is the same Congress that now wants to disarm its citizens leaving it defenseless against its enemies.
Didn’t these clowns swear to defend the Constitution, including its 2nd Amendment?
We shouldn't have to worry about whose side you'll come down on if conflict arises between America and the country of origin of one (or more, in the case of 14th Amendment "Anchor" babies) of your non-citizen parents.
Naturalized citizen parents of American citizens born to them have taken the affirmative step of establishing loyalty to America.
“While theres no legal precedent for Cruzs situation, most constitutional scholars surveyed by POLITICO believe the 42-year-old tea party sensation would be OK.”
Why are all of these Obama-loving law professors and Politico backing the eligibility of Cruz???
Why, especially after they attacked McCain head-on, as documented in Corsi’s “Where’s the Birth Certificate”...at least up until Leahy’s NON-binding Senate resolution. This was obviously part of a quid pro quo agreement for both parties to lay off the eligibility of the other’s candidate.
Now, right out of the box, the Dems and the Law School elite are giving Cruz a pass. It looks highly suspicious.
There is one major reason why they might be doing this, IMO, and that is to protect Barry in the event that proof is found that he was born in Kenya.
If Barry was Kenyan-born his legal profile would be nearly identical to Cruz’s: Foreign soil birth and only one US citizen parent, the mother. Cruz has the advantage of having his mother have 10 years of US residence prior to the birth, but otherwise Barry and Cruz would be legally similar.
And this gets to why many of the quoted professors say Cruz would be a natural born citizen. I believe that they are buying into the 9th Circuit Marguet-Pillado case ruling.
Here is the key part of my vanity thread on the case:
“Obama cites US v Marguet-Pillado. Dicta implies Obama eligible even if born in Kenya”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2857598/posts
The Marguet-Pillado case, quoted above, affirms in dicta that Obama would be eligible to be president even if he was born outside the USA!
IMO, the timing of this citation by Obama and his legal team shows consciousness of guilt that he is actively hiding his actual foreign birth, which most likely would be in Kenya. The defendant in the Marguet-Pillado case was born in Mexico to a Mexican citizen mother and had stipulated in an earlier trial (reversed and remanded) that the US citizen named Marguet that appeared on his Mexican birth certificate was not his natural father. Why would Obama cite to a case which adds nothing at all towards establishing his eligibility if he were, in fact, born in the US? Here is the Opinion from the case, which does not appear to apply to Obama at all:
OPINION
GWIN, District Judge:
“Defendant-Appellant Carlos Marguet-Pillado (’Marguet- Pillado’) appeals his conviction for being a previously removed alien found in the United States, in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1326. With his appeal, Marguet-Pillado argues that the district court erred in refusing to give a requested jury instruction. The instruction would have permitted Marguet-Pillado to argue that the government had failed to establish that Marguet-Pillado was an alien who had not obtained derivative citizenship from his step-father, a United States citizen listed on Marguet-Pillados birth certificate as his father. The district court rejected the instruction after finding that an earlier appeal in this case relieved the government of the burden of establishing alienage in the second trial. Because we find that in the second trial, Marguet-Pillado could require the government to come forward with proof that Marguet-Pillado was an alien and did not have derivative citizenship, we REVERSE Marguet- Pillados conviction and remand this case for a new trial.”
If born in Kenya, whether Obama would even be a US citizen at birth (natural born or not) would depend on whether his parents were legally married. INS records show that BHO Sr. was deported based substantially on suspicion that he had entered into a bigamous marriage with Stanley Ann Dunham. Below are the State Department rules for married vs unmarried foreign births with a US citizen mom:
http://travel.state.gov/law/citizenship/citizenship_5199.html
Birth Abroad to One Citizen and One Alien Parent in Wedlock:
A child born abroad to one U.S. citizen parent and one alien parent acquires U.S. citizenship at birth under Section 301(g) of the INA provided the U.S. citizen parent was physically present in the United States or one of its outlying possessions for the time period required by the law applicable at the time of the child’s birth. (For birth on or after November 14, 1986, a period of five years physical presence, two after the age of fourteen, is required. For birth between December 24, 1952 and November 13, 1986, a period of ten years, five after the age of fourteen, is required for physical presence in the United States or one of its outlying possessions to transmit U.S. citizenship to the child.) The U.S. citizen parent must be genetically related to the child to transmit U.S. citizenship.
Birth Abroad Out-of-Wedlock to a U.S. Citizen Mother:
A person born abroad out-of-wedlock to a U.S. citizen mother may acquire U.S. citizenship under Section 309(c) of the INA if the mother was a U.S. citizen at the time of the persons birth and if the mother was physically present in the United States or one of its outlying possessions for a continuous period of one year prior to the persons birth. The mother must be genetically related to the person in order to transmit U.S. citizenship.
Ironically, if Obama was born in Kenya it would be to his advantage for him to have been born out-of-wedlock because, as can be seen above, his mother meets the residency requirement to pass citizenship to him if she was single while she does NOT meet the residency requirement to pass citizenship to him if she were legally married to BHO Sr.
Bottom line is that the Obama legal team is now claiming that Marguet-Pillado applies to Obama and that case would make the out-of-wedlock Kenya-born child of an eighteen-year-old US citizen mother a “natural born citizen” according to the two-judge 9th Circuit majority and eligible to be president of the United States according to the Obama legal team. This is a blatant attempt to overturn the unanimous holding in Minor v. Happerset defining natural born citizen to exclude those who were not born in the country to citizen parents:
www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/.../USSC_CR_0088_0162_ZO.html
The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. 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.
Note that the Congressional Research Service has also jumped to endorse the Marguet-Pillado case as affirming that a foreign born child biologically-related to a US citizen is a citizen at birth and thus a natural born citizen and thus eligible to be POTUS:
quote
Concerning the contention made in earlier cases that everyone who is made a citizen only by federal statute is a naturalized citizen (even those who are made citizens at birth by statute), itmay be noted that the common understanding and usage of the terms naturalized and naturalization, as well as the precise legal meaning under current federal law, now indicate that someone who is a citizen at birth is not considered to have been naturalized.
Justice Breyer, for example, dissenting on other grounds in Miller v. Albright, explained that this kind of citizenship, that is, under statutes that confer citizenship at birth, was not intended to involve[ ] naturalization, citing current federal law at 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(23). The Supreme Court recently recognized in Tuan Anh Nguyen v. INS, that federal law now specifically defines naturalization as the conferring of nationality of a state upon a person after birth, and thus it could be argued that by current definition and understanding in federal law and jurisprudence, one who is entitled to U.S. citizenship automatically at birth or by birth could not be considered to be naturalized. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has specifically recognized in a recent case that one may be a natural born citizen of the United Sates in two ways: either by being born in the United States, or by being born abroad of at least one citizen-parent who has met the residency requirement. In United States v. Carlos Jesus Marguet-Pillado, a case dealing with the propriety of an appeal based on requested jury instructions not given, the court stated:
No one disputes that Marguet-Pillados requested instruction was an accurate statement of the law, in that it correctly stated the two circumstances in which an individual born in 1968is a natural born United States citizen: (1) that the person was born in the United States or (2) born outside the United States to a biologically-related United States citizen parent who met certain residency requirements.
end quote
We need someone to stand up to the media like Reagan did. Cruz may very well be able to accomplish this.
I pray that at least one brave Patriot exists among those in Congress.
Except McCain wasn’t born on the military base. The base had no medical facility for birthing so his mama had to deliver at the hospital (can’t think of the name off hand) in Colon.
Only republicans who are ineligible are ineligible.
His father was assigned to that US base. Wherever his US military father stepped on dirt or carpet, he was a US citizen and that dirt and carpet meant nothing and that goes for the wife, too. McCain was a US citizen the instant he was born. The US military has always had that rule when they send service men anywhere. Consider the US flag draped over every one of them wherever they are - they are an extension of the US.
Another cockroach in the DC swamp - Kermit Roosevelt
I know it doesn't! They would not have taken the trouble to designate only one citizen as "natural born" out of all the others listed if there was no difference between them.
Before the Obama Supporters start whining “We should not discuss Obama Eligibility because McCain/Romney/Rubio won’t win” Liberal mantra....the facts:
Ted Cruz was born in Canada...he is not eligible.
Obama is not eligibile, Rubio is not eligible, heck even McCain was not eligible (born in a Panamanian hopsital, and the Senate only passed a RESOLUTION, not a BILL, concerning his eligibility).
Never seen so many reportedly “conservative” people wimp out on an issue of Constitutionality
I pray with you but, in the meantime, don’t hold your breath until one shows up.
Even if they did find the evidence, no one will have the courage to bring it to the forefront.
It is so much easier and more convenient to let the Republic die.
The truth is that Cruz’s father is not a Cuban.exile - he was a domestic terrorist in Cuba and was arrested. He came here as an immigrant, before the Castro takeover.
The Citizenship Clause does not protect persons who acquire U.S. citizenship by virtue of being born abroad to parents, at least one of whom is a U.S. citizen, because such persons are not "born or naturalized in the United States." U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1. See Rogers v. Bellei, 401 U.S. 815, 827 (1971).Individuals not protected by the Citizenship Clause acquire U.S. citizenship, if at all, solely by an act of Congress enacted pursuant to the Naturalization Clause, and not pursuant to the Constitution itself. See Rogers v. Bellei, 401 U.S. 815, 830 (1971) (Citizenship Clause does "'not touch[] 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'") (quoting United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649, 688 (1898)). With respect to such individuals, Congress's power under the Naturalization Clause includes the power to set conditions subsequent to naturalization, failure of which may result in expatriation without consent.
JOHN C. YOO Deputy Assistant Attorney General Office of Legal Counsel
http://www.justice.gov/olc/expatriation.htm
Only a U.S Citizen, who maintains their citizenship in perpetuity can be a natural born citizen.
“Only a U.S Citizen, who maintains their citizenship in perpetuity can be a natural born citizen.”
Yoo didn’t say that in the quote you provided and SCOTUS has never ruled your statement to be law in an on point case relative to Barry or to anyone else, IIRC.
Out of 310 million Americans can’t we find one f’n conservative not on the GOPe waiting list and isn’t screwing around on his wife to run for president?
For starters it would be good if he or she was born in the US and his parents were Americans too. IMHO.
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