Uncle Sam sez:
Monsieur Vattel
Can go to h*ll.
Don't want to lose,
We need Ted Cruz!
Posted on 07/21/2013 5:34:04 PM PDT by Cold Case Posse Supporter
Since Canadian born Ted Cruz has emerged on the scene in Washington as a future presidential candidate for 2016, attention has turned to whether he is Constitutionally eligible for Article 2 Section 1, the presidential qualification clause. This is what we know. Ted Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Many say that disqualifies him to be eligible for the presidency. Enter former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm. She was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. I came across an interview she did with Fox News's Chris Wallace in February of 2010. During the interview Wallace brought up the fact that since she was born in Canada, she wasn't eligible to be president. Here is the transcript:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/02/21/transcript-fox-news-sunday-interview-future-gop/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%253A+foxnews%252Fpolitics+%2528Text+-+Politics%2529
"GRANHOLM: No, I’m totally focused this year on creating every single job I can until the last moment. December 31st at midnight is when I’ll stop. So I have no idea what I’m going to do next, but I’m not going to run for president. I can tell you that.
WALLACE: Yes, that’s true. We should point out Governor Granholm is a Canadian and cannot run for president.
GRANHOLM: I’m American. I’ve got dual citizenship.”
With that said, I went to the biography of Jennifer Granholm and found that she was born to one American citizen and is indeed a dual Citizen who became 'NATURALIZED' as a U.S. Citizen in 1980 at the age of 21. Now this raises a question. How can a naturalized U.S. Citizen become president of the United States?
Continued below.
The Framers in Article II distinguished between a “citizen” and a “natural born citizen”. The first Congress, many members of which were Framers, in the Naturalization Act of 1790 distinguished between a “citizen” and a “natural born citizen”.
The distinguishing characteristic was parental US citizenship.
Congress in the Naturalization Act of 1795, et seq, no longer made such a distinction and declared all persons naturalized to be “citizen”.
Are we to conclude that subsequent to 1795 there were no further “natural born citizens”?
Are we to conclude that other children born with parental US citizenship - those who were not “born beyond Sea, or out of the limits of the United States”, those born within the United States - are “natural born citizens”?
Or are these other children born with parental US citizenship within the United States something other than “natural born citizens”? Why? Was it necessary that they be “born beyond Sea, or out of the limits of the United States” to be “natural born citizens”?
Who are the post 1795 natural born citizens?
The reasonable conclusion is that those born within the United States with parental US citizenship are “natural born citizens”.
Okay. Perhaps I should better have said that Bayard's claim relied upon the common law, upon the common legal understanding of what citizenship entailed, and on the common legal understanding of what "natural born citizen" actually meant.
As Alexander Hamilton told us in The Federalist, terms in the Constitution can be understood by referring to what they mean "in the statutory language of that country from which our jurisprudence is derived."
And as Vice-Chancellor Sandford observed in Lynch v. Clarke, many of the terms used in the Constitution are to be found nowhere else but in the common law.
The common law understanding of the terms "natural born citizen" and "citizenship," and the understanding of the intent of the Founders and Framers by the generation who personally knew them, which included Bayard, Marshall, Story and Kent, was that if you were born a citizen, whether by birth on US soil or by birth abroad to citizen parents, you were a natural born citizen and eligible to be President.
And you keep ducking the major point to try and focus in on some minor point.
The major point is that every major legal expert in early America who spoke clearly on the meaning of "natural born citizen" says that birthers are full of crap.
Every single one. Rawle, Tucker, Swift, Bayard, Marshall, Story, Kent, Sandford.
They are unanimous. And they are consistent with all the Founding Fathers as well, such as Madison who told us that there were two means to citizenship, place of birth and parentage, but that place of birth was generally what applied in the United States, and Hamilton, who tells us if we want to know the meaning of terms used in the Constitution, we should look at the legal language of our mother country.
So all of our early legal experts who spoke clearly on the subject are literally unanimous in saying, "No, it doesn't take birth on US soil plus two citizen parents to be a natural born citizen. It only takes being born a citizen. That's it."
The major point is that every major legal expert in early America who spoke clearly on the meaning of "natural born citizen" says that birthers are full of crap.
All of our early legal experts who spoke clearly on the subject are literally unanimous in saying, "No, it doesn't take birth on US soil plus two citizen parents to be a natural born citizen. It only takes being born a citizen. That's it."
We know from the 1790 Naturalization Act that Congress distinguished “natural born citizen” and “citizen”. The law at the time of Cruz’s birth made no such distinction. The law says Cruz is a “citizen”.
I’m curious about Ray76’s position on the now moot category of “derivative citizenship.”
For example, Herbert Hoover was born in Iowa in 1874. His father Jesse was from Ohio, a US citizen. His mother Hulda Minthorn was from Ontario, Canada. They were married in 1870. According to an 1855 act of Congress, which was in effect until 1922, Hoover’s mother became a U.S. citizen automatically when she married Jesse.
So, Hoover was born in the U.S., both parents were citizens but his mother had “derivative U.S. citizenship” via a statute which passed in Congress on February 1855, which stated, “any woman who might lawfully be naturalized under existing laws, married, or shall be married to a citizen of the United States, shall be deemed and taken to be a citizen.” [Act of February 10, 1855, 10 Stat. 604, section 2].
Woodrow Wison’s mother was also a statutory “derivative citizen” by marriage. President Wilson’s mother was from Carlisle, England.
Should we consider the mothers of President’s who became citizens via marriage to have been natural born citizens?
We've been over this a bunch of times already.
It may or may not be that the 1795 Congress intended to revoke the eligibility of children born overseas to the Presidency. But that Act was succeeded by the Naturalization Acts of 1798 and 1802, and eventually one in the mid-1800s. And then more after that. A BUNCH more after that, throughout US history.
I think Chief Justice Marshall, and the other early legal experts as well (Story, Kent, etc.) would tell you that whatever the intention of the 1795 Congress, the intention of ALL succeeding Congresses was that children born US citizens overseas would be equally eligible to the Presidency as those born in the United States.
And yes, there is something to be said for your position. Unlike most birther claims, it's not completely cracked. So you can compliment yourself on that. You're not pushing the totally cracked birther BS that the Founding Fathers restrictively defined "natural born citizen" as "born on US soil to two citizen parents" and it doesn't mean anything else, yada, yada.
Your position (if I understand it correctly) is that even if Congress had the power to declare that children born US citizens overseas are natural-born citizens and eligible to the Presidency (which they clearly did), then they repealed that eligibility in 1795 and failed to ever reinstate it.
And like I say, that point of view is not completely without merit.
But neither Chief Justice John Marshall, nor Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, nor Chancellor James Kent, nor James Bayard agree with you.
That's all.
Yes, 1855. That’s the year I was trying to think of in my last post.
Uncle Sam sez:
Monsieur Vattel
Can go to h*ll.
Don't want to lose,
We need Ted Cruz!
What do think Ray76’s position will be on foreign born mothers of presidents who got their citizenship status by statute and marriage?
I don't know, but it's an interesting question.
These are women who became citizens sort of accidentally. As I understand it, they didn't swear the oath of allegiance to our country, they just entered into the marriage commitment to an American citizen.
I think to be consistent he would have to say, well, such women were citizens.
But since when have birthers ever cared about consistency? They care nothing about consistency, and they only care the evidence to the extent that they can find some scrap of it that at least seems to imply their claims are correct. The rest of it can be thrown under the bus.
So I don't know. I guess we'll see what he says.
I think you can have allegiance to your husband without necessarily having allegiance to his nation.
In May 2012, it was reported that Marcus Bachmann had registered for Swiss citizenship and after it was finalized, Congresswoman and presidential candidate Michele Bachmann automatically became a Swiss citizen as well. The Bachmanns and their three youngest children were granted Swiss citizenship on March 19, 2012. They had been eligible for this under Swiss nationality law because Marcus Bachmann’s parents were Swiss. Bachmann denied that she or her husband had recently applied for Swiss citizenship, saying that her husband had already been a dual citizen as the son of Swiss immigrants, and that she had automatically acquired Swiss citizenship under then-current Swiss law when she married him in 1978; however, when asked by a Swiss Television reporter on May 8, 2012, “I understand you just got Swiss Citizenship,” Bachmann’s reply was, “Yes, we did.” Marcus Bachmann did not register the marriage with the Swiss authorities until 2012. Within two days of the first reports of Bachmann’s dual citizenship, she announced that she had written to the Swiss consulate to have her Swiss citizenship withdrawn.
“I think Chief Justice Marshall, and the other early legal experts as well (Story, Kent, etc.) would tell you that whatever the intention of the 1795 Congress, the intention of ALL succeeding Congresses was that children born US citizens overseas would be equally eligible to the Presidency as those born in the United States.”
The law states otherwise.
“Should we consider the mothers of President’s who became citizens via marriage to have been natural born citizens?”
No Presidents have become citizens via marriage, and any such citizenship would not modify the citizenship of the mother.
If you intend to ask, “Should we consider the child of a woman who became a citizen via marriage a “natural born citizen”, then the answer is “yes, of course”.
In your opinion.
Not in the opinion of anybody who matters now, and not in the opinion of anybody who mattered back in 1834.
Sorry, but your opinion doesn't matter. You're entitled to it, but it doesn't matter in the slightest.
Neither does mine, if that's any comfort.
Yes, I think you can have allegiance to your husband without having allegiance to his nation.
8 USC § 1408The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth:
(g) a person born outside the geographical limits of the United States and its outlying possessions of parents one of whom is an alien, and the other a citizen of the United States who, prior to the birth of such person, was physically present in the United States or its outlying possessions for a period or periods totaling not less than five years, at least two of which were after attaining the age of fourteen years: Provided, That any periods of honorable service in the Armed Forces of the United States, or periods of employment with the United States Government or with an international organization as that term is defined in section 288 of title 22 by such citizen parent, or any periods during which such citizen parent is physically present abroad as the dependent unmarried son or daughter and a member of the household of a person
The law applicable at an other time
The Naturalization Act of 1790Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That any Alien being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof on application to any common law Court of record in any one of the States wherein he shall have resided for the term of one year at least, and making proof to the satisfaction of such Court that he is a person of good character, and taking the oath or affirmation prescribed by law to support the Constitution of the United States, which Oath or Affirmation such Court shall administer, and the Clerk of such Court shall record such Application, and the proceedings thereon; and thereupon such person shall be considered as a Citizen of the United States. And the children of such person so naturalized, dwelling within the United States, being under the age of twenty one years at the time of such naturalization, shall also be considered as citizens of the United States. And the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond Sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born Citizens: Provided, that the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States: Provided also, that no person heretofore proscribed by any States, shall be admitted a citizen as aforesaid, except by an Act of the Legislature of the State in which such person was proscribed.
Had Congress so chosen the laws codified as 8 USC § 1408 would have provision to declare certain persons "natural born citizen", just as Congress has chosen at other times. Congress made no such provision and the law does not have such provision.
The law (8 USC § 1408) states that Cruz is a citizen.
Ray, I understand your opinion. I will go further than that, and say that in my opinion, YOUR opinion is not without merit.
But what you don’t seem to understand is that nobody who actually matters - either now or back in 1834, which was still the early days of our Republic - seems to agree with your viewpoint.
It is also interesting to notice how the conversation has shifted as more information has come to light.
Earlier days:
Birther: “Natural born citizen” means “born on US soil of two citizen parents. Anyone who disagrees with that is a traitor and a troll.”
Non-Birther: Wait a minute. I’m not so sure about that. Look at...
Today:
Non-Birther: Literally every major legal expert of the early United States who speaks on the issue says the birther meme is wrong. The First Congress, which with President Washington included 40% of the signers of the Constitution, specified clearly that children born overseas to our US citizens were to be considered as natural born citizens. It’s obvious they believed Congress had this Constitutional power. One of our most major legal experts, Rawle, was crystal clear that US-born people didn’t have to have citizen parents. Tucker and Swift seem to have been of like mind. And in 1834, many of the major giants of American Constitutional law, who knew the Founding Generation and their intentions, noted that people born US citizens overseas were equally eligible to the Presidency.
Birther: Yeah, but after 1795 Congress never included the specific words “natural born.”
You’re no longer even agitating for Obama to be declared ineligible - something that will never, ever, EVER happen, by the way.
Now you’re agitating for TED CRUZ to be declared ineligible, for heaven’s sake.
One of the best conservative candidates out there.
Ray, I think you kind of lost your perspective on this quite a while back. If you ask me.
O.K., that’s all I wanted to know, thanks! I guess some statutes DO matter in determining natural born citizenship.
Ray seems actually to have admitted as much in the case of statutes like our Naturalization Acts.
It is interesting to me to see how the conversation has shifted as more information has been brought to light. (See 577)
The child of citizens - it does not matter if those citizens are naturalized or not, just that they are citizens.
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