Madison commented in his presidency that children born to citizens (citizen father automatically bestowed citizenship to the mother via marriage in that era) at sea or temporarily abroad were to be considered ‘natural born’.
The idea is that American citizens maintain a ‘domicile’ on US or US controlled/possessed soil and are able to maintain a ‘residence’ abroad. For purposes of immigration, ‘domicile’ and ‘residence’ are legally distinct terms.
It is clear the fact that Cruz was born in Canada does not render him ineligible to be president because his mother was there for work, not for immigration to Canada. In other words, her domicile was in the USA while her residence was temporarily in Canada.
Where Ted Cruz gets hung in this is that it was not his father who was an American citizen at the time of his birth nor was his father automatically bestowed with citizenship via marriage to his citizen mother.
What is needed is a new law or an amendment to existing law with retroactive and prospective provisions that clearly address the distinction between ‘natural born citizen’ versus ‘citizen by birth’. We know that all natural born citizens are citizens by birth but not the other way around. In set language, natural born citizens are a proper subset of citizens by birth; the requirements for natural born are stricter than those for citizen by birth.
Why was the bar for natural born set higher than that for citizen by birth?
It was John Jay’s letter to General George Washington that requested a higher bar for the presidency when the Constitution was being drafted and resulted in ‘natural born’ meaning ‘second generation’ as a requirement for the presidency.
John Jay was clearly concerned that a President as Commander-in-Chief must be loyal and have allegiance to the United States because a person with divided loyalties and muddled allegiance would have command of the Army and hence would be in a position to become a tyrant.
I am persuaded that Barack Obama has divided loyalties and muddled allegiance to the United States.
But with Cruz, it is clear he is American through and through in spirit, loyalty and allegiance.
if John Jay becomes Chief Justice in the next 3 years, this could get interesting.
BTW, Clarence Thomas goes on and on in his Official Opinions published by the Court ... about a lot of things. And, legally, they mean diddle-spit.
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