My brother and I were both born in the United States; my brother in NJ in 1948 and I in NY twelve years later.
My mother was also born in the United States in PA. Her parents were also born in the United States as were her paternal and maternal grandparents, her maternal great grandparents emigrated from Germany to the US in the 1850’s to Pennsylvania – I have their immigration and naturalization papers to prove it.
But my father was born in Norway and came to the US when he was about six years old in 1927, his parents legally immigrated here, and even though they struggled through the Depression, they both worked full time jobs and purchased a house in NJ, had two more sons who were born here and my grandparents eventually applied for US citizenship during WWII, but since my father by then was over 21 when they finally became naturalized, their naturalization did not automatically confer to him.
While they still had family in Norway and were concerned for them during the war, including my grandmother’s father who was a newspaper editor back in Kristiansand and who wrote anti-Nazi editorials and ended up having to go into the mountains with the Norwegian underground when the Gestapo put a price on his head, my grandparents by now considered themselves Americans and not Norwegians. They eventually travelled back to Norway for a visit but that wasn’t until the late 1960’s and all they could say was how happy they were to come back “home” to the USA and what a great and wonderful country the USA was. (And for what it’s worth, when they had a flight layover in Germany, my grandmother refused to get off the plane because she didn’t want to set foot on German soil – she really knew how to hold a grudge - LOL!)
And another fact: my great grandfather wrote some letters to my father during the war. Being that the letters came from a Nazi occupied Norway and written in Norwegian, they were opened and read before reaching my father but not redacted as what my great grandfather told my father was “Kill some of those rat bastard Japs for me”, “We look forward to our liberation from those damnable Socialist Nazis” and “God Bless you and the God Bless the USA!” I wish I could have met my great grandfather as he was an amazing and wonderful man.
Right after Pearl Harbor, my father at the age of 18, tried to enlist but couldn’t because he was not yet a Naturalized Citizen but a year later he received a draft notice. Glad to serve his country (the USA) even though he was working a job that was considered essential to the war effort and one that could have entitled him a deferment, he sworn allegiance to the United States Of America while taking the military induction oath and he served in the SPT in the US Army Infantry, was awarded two Purple Hearts and several combat metals including two metals for valor in battle.
He came home after the war a year later met and married my mother. My father had applied for his naturalization before and while he was still serving in the army but government being government, his paperwork got lost more than once. He started the process again once he came home but did not become naturalized until shortly after my brother was born, due mostly to one of his military discharge papers having a mistake on it and showing he served in Europe and not the Pacific war theater, typical governmental and bureaucratic SNFU, delaying the process. The judge who performed his citizenship swearing in when my brother was an wee infant, told my father that as far as he was concerned, and although certainly not a legally binding opinion, that this was in his opinion a “formality” and that my father had become a US citizen when he took the military oath and by virtue of his service to his country.
I was born after well after my father became a fully naturalized citizen.
So my question is for you hard core “birthers’; is my brother not a “Natural Born Citizen” where as I am? Would my brother NOT be eligible to become POTUS where as I WOULD be by virtue of my father’s naturalization status when I was born vs. when my brother was born? Is my US born brother really subject to and beholding the laws of Norway where as I am not? And FWIW, if Norway tried to claim my brother as their citizen, knowing him, he’d tell them to go pound sand where the sun don’t shine because my brother is just about as true red white and blue and a conservative flag waving patriotic American as anyone I know, as was my father.
Funny, my brother’s birth certificate looks no different from mine. There is no foot note on my brother’s birth certificate stating that he’s a “citizen by birth” but not a “natural born citizen”. My brother did not have to become “naturalized”, did not have to renounce any Norwegian citizenship or claim to him.
During the Vietnam War when my brother registered for the draft, even when he tried to volunteer, he wasn’t told that being merely a “citizen by birth” and not a “natural born citizen”, that he had to prove his allegiance to the United States as he might have a natural allegiance to a foreign country - Norway. My brother’s poor eye sight and bad knees due to playing football in HS was what kept him from enlisting BTW and disqualified him from being drafted, not his citizenship status. And when my brother applied for his US passport, he did not have to provide any more or less documentation that I did when I applied for mine. Both our certified state birth certificates and state driver’s licenses were good enough. Our US passports look no different.
When my brother worked as courier delivery driver and delivered documents to the US Capitol, several US Senate office buildings and on occasion to the White House and had to undergo a back ground check and obtain a security clearance, his citizenship status was never brought into question and nothing on his security clearance differentiated him as being a “citizen by birth” vs. a “natural born citizen”. I went through a similar security clearance check a few years later it was no different. When we had a relative who applied for a job with the NSA, he used my father as a reference. When the folks from the NSA came to our house, they asked lots of questions about our relative, his character and such and they noted that they had reviewed my father’s military service record and made mention of how distinguished it was, but never once did they make any mentioned of his “foreign birth”. I’m sure they looked into it but it didn’t garner any questioning from them.
There are in reality only two types of United States Citizens by law – those who are born here – i.e. “Natural Born Citizens” and those born overseas, not to a US citizen parent or parents, citizens by birth of another country who have to become “naturalized”.
If persons born in the United States who do not have two US citizen parents (either by birth or by naturalization) at the time of their US birth are not NBC’s by birth, then tell me how or why such a person doesn’t have to become “naturalized”? By what and by where does any official documentation; a US birth certificate, US passport, state issued driver’s license, a federal security clearance¸ etc. show that there is a difference between a Natural Born Citizen and a Citizen By Birth?
None of you hard core birthers can, because there simply is no difference or distinction.
I would however make the distinction on so called “anchor babies”. In my opinion, if a person is born on US soil to illegal immigrants, they should not be granted birth right citizenship. And although something I’d like to see changed, unfortunately that is not what is done currently in practice and we need to work to change this. I have no problem however with the children born in the US to two parents who are legal and document immigrants, permanent alien residents who have the intent and are working toward citizenship being granted birth right citizenship. The children born here of Illegal aliens on the other hand and in my opinion should be deported along with their parents.
Sounds like you come from great stock. America is the richer for having you here. And I hope and pray that America can get back to where the free world looks to America and says “God bless America!”
You ask great questions. I haven’t studied this issue thoroughly but I do know that somewhere in the early legal documents/commentaries it was said that a person initiating the naturalization process shows intent that basically counts as naturalization for these purposes.
But the arguments deserve to be answered LEGALLY. Your brother deserves an answer. Ted Cruz deserves an answer. It is wrong for our judiciary to be keeping all these people in legal limbo. Would you agree? They’ve done it by claiming it is nobody’s business whether Obama, McCain, and even foreign-born-with-no-US-citizen-parents Roger Calero were natural born citizens. Would you like your argument to be actually heard and sorted out so that you can get legally-binding answers for your brother and for Ted Cruz?
I agree with your points.
I too am opposed to granting anchor babies U.S. citizenship.
But the people who claim that Ted Cruz is Canadian NOT AMERICAN because his mother gave birth to him on Canadian soil, would have a hard time reconciling THAT claim, with the position virtually all we conservatives would claim on anchor babies.
The truth will set everyone free.
Ted Cruz has citizenship which he attained AT BIRTH - did not need to be naturalized - because his mother was an American citizen who happened to be working in Canada at the time.
That this was defined by congressional statute is no problem whatsoever, like some here want to make it. The Constitution does not define natural born citizen, and the Constitution gave Congress the power to define it.
There needs to be common sense in this matter. The Founders in no way were trying to exclude from full citizenship rights a baby who happened to be born across a boundary line, but who otherwise would be entitled to those rights.
I gave the example of let’s say a pregnant American citizen who walks across a border to buy something in a store she can’t obtain on this side. She goes into labor before she can get back across the line and her baby is delivered by a border guard or a bystander because it comes right then and there - no time for a hospital. Within a few feet or inches of the border she was TRYING to cross back into America.
Are we to believe our FABULOUS FOUNDERS were trying to prevent that American’s baby from either being a citizen at all, or from being categorized as “natural born” therefore banned from ever becoming POTUS, solely because he was born while she shopped for an hour in Mexico or Canada?
Of.course.not!
The bottom line is that the US Constitution does not define natural born citizen.
Everything outside of current US law is simply opinion for debating societies.
Current US law accepts as “citizens at birth” those who are born on the land or those who are the offspring of at least on qualified US citizen.
Anything else is conjecture.