Posted on 05/25/2014 6:04:01 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Partisanship plays a major role in how Americans decide who should be eligible for the Presidency, and the concept of what being “natural born” means also plays a role. The U.S. Constitution, in Article II, states that only “natural born” citizens are eligible to serve (it also sets an age limit and grandfathered in anyone who was a citizen at the time of the adoption of the Constitution). In the latest Economist/YouGov Poll, saying someone is eligible to serve depends on who you are.
Nearly everyone agrees that someone born in the United States with two citizen parents is a natural born American, and nearly everyone agrees that someone born outside the United States to NON-citizen parents is not. About three in four – Republicans, Independents and Democrats – believe having only one citizen parent and being born in the United States qualifies you as natural born.
If you are born outside the United States, most Americans say you need to have two American-citizen parents. That would make John McCain, the 2008 GOP presidential nominee, natural born, as his U.S. citizen U.S. military parents were stationed in the Panama Canal Zone when he was born. But more than half say that if you are born outside the United States, and only one parent is a citizen, you are not a natural born American,
That means more than half of Republicans (53%) would disqualify Texas Senator Ted Cruz from the Presidency on principle. Cruz was born in Canada to a mother who was an American citizen, while his father was not. But fewer than one in four Republicans think Cruz was born outside the country; only 10% know his mother was a citizen and his father was not.
Of course, some of those Republicans may be answering the question by making a statement about President Barack Obama, and not Ted Cruz. Nearly half of Republicans say they believe the President was born outside the United States, not in Hawaii, and most of those say his mother was a citizen and his father not.
Consequently, most Republicans say Cruz is legally eligible to be President, while President Obama is not.
Tea Party Republicans are even more sure Cruz is eligible (68% think that), but most of them don’t know he was born outside the United States. Tea Party Republican say the President was born outside the United States, and less than a third think he is legally eligible to serve as President.
There are large party differences for one option. Is someone a natural born American who was born in the United States, but to two immigrant parents? Democrats say they are, while Republicans disagree. Parties have nominated children of immigrants for the Presidency (Michael Dukakis in 1988), but no child of two immigrants has been elected President since Andrew Jackson in 1828 (and he was born in the Carolinas before the adoption of the Constitution, and therefore grandfathered in to presidential eligibility).
Florida Senator Marco Rubio was born in the United States, but his parents, immigrants from Cuba, were not yet citizens when he was born. Half of Republicans say that would disqualify someone from being “natural born,” as the Constitution requires to run for President.
You have no idea what you’re talking about.
“why did Article 2 contain the “grandfather clause”? Why was it needed??”
The grandfather clause allowed naturalized citizens who had risked their lives for the Revolution to become President - men like Alexander Hamilton, who was part of the group who added it. From Justice Story:
“§ 1473. It is indispensable, too, that the president should be a natural born citizen of the United States; or a citizen at the adoption of the constitution, and for fourteen years before his election. This permission of a naturalized citizen to become president is an exception from the great fundamental policy of all governments, to exclude foreign influence from their executive councils and duties. It was doubtless introduced (for it has now become by lapse of time merely nominal, and will soon become wholly extinct) out of respect to those distinguished revolutionary patriots, who were born in a foreign land, and yet had entitled themselves to high honours in their adopted country. A positive exclusion of them from the office would have been unjust to their merits, and painful to their sensibilities. But the general propriety of the exclusion of foreigners, in common cases, will scarcely be doubted by any sound statesman. It cuts off all chances for ambitious foreigners, who might otherwise be intriguing for the office; and interposes a barrier against those corrupt interferences of foreign governments in executive elections, which have inflicted the most serious evils upon the elective monarchies of Europe. Germany, Poland, and even the pontificate of Rome, are sad, but instructive examples of the enduring mischiefs arising from this source.”
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a2_1_5s2.html
“You can read it in the contemporaneous legal treatise written by Vattel The Law of Nations, and the Principles of Natural Law.”
No, one could not. Why? Because ‘natural born citizen’ is a mistranslation of “Les Naturels ou indigènes font ceux qui font nés dans le pays de Parens Citoyens”, and that translation was made in 1797, 10 years AFTER the Constitution was written. Prior to then, all copies used the more accurate “The natives, or indigenes”.
So if we apply this to the natural born citizen condition for becoming POTUS, let’s assume a hypothetical situation. Someone on the administrative and technical staff of a diplomatic mission to the U.N. is pregnant with the child of her diplomat spouse. Before she comes to term, she is recalled by her country of origin and her diplomatic visa is cancelled. However, rather than departing the U.S., she stays illegally and has the kid in the ER. Following a nationwide manhunt, she is deported after one week on the lamb in the U.S. The child returns at age 35 to run for POTUS as a “natural born citizen” (your definition, not mine). And your position is the FF would be okay with that?
What’s a grandfather class?
.
“But you said the natural born subjects automatically became natural born Citizens. If that was the case, there would have been no need for the grandfather class”
Wrong again. Try reading what I wrote:
“The grandfather clause allowed naturalized citizens who had risked their lives for the Revolution to become President...”
And what Justice Story wrote:
“This permission of a naturalized citizen to become president is an exception...out of respect to those distinguished revolutionary patriots, who were born in a foreign land, and yet had entitled themselves to high honours in their adopted country.”
BTW - Justice Story was writing in 1833, so he was not an Obamabot!
“Joseph Story (September 18, 1779 – September 10, 1845) was an American lawyer and jurist who served on the Supreme Court of the United States from 1811 to 1845. He is most remembered for his opinions in Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee and The Amistad case, and especially for his magisterial Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, first published in 1833. Dominating the field in the 19th century, this work is a cornerstone of early American jurisprudence. It is the second comprehensive treatise on the provisions of the U.S. Constitution and remains a critical source of historical information about the forming of the American republic and the early struggles to define its law.”
Ted Cruz - 2016
Obama...means its decided law....anyone in the freaking earth can be a citizen of this Country and be President......UNLESS HE STANDS FOR THE CHRISTIAN GOD.....IN THAT CASE.........NOPE.
jusayin.
Its as simple as black and white.
Dunno what your "FF" is, but the kid loses. Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 provides:
No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
This is just a poll. I have seen excellent discussions of the legal basis for each position on FR.
You are "subject to the jurisdiction" if you are obliged to obey the law.
That covers all immigrants except for foreign diplomats, such as the driver of the Caddy in the photo I posted in #44.
Diplomats can do whatever they want. If the US objects, it's a diplomatic, not a criminal beef. And the resolution is a diplomatic matter: either the offender is expelled, the offender's government waives immunity, or it gets overlooked (almost certainly the case in the photo).
Babydoll, you have to do research, but common sense should tell you that no country would ever convey citizenship because someone stepped illegally into their country and dropped a kid. This is just one of many laws and statutes that have intentionally misapplied to weaken our nation. If every other country in the world no alien can walk in and birth a citizen. Why would you assume that we did? “Subject to jurisdiction” and similar phrases are ubiquitous in the rest of world and are steadily held to mean within the social contract. This is contract law. Citizenship is a social contract. All contracts must have a meeting of the minds. All citizens are subjects and within the jurisdiction of the national social contract. Why don’t you read the notes of the people who WROTE THE LAW?
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. ALL lawyers have a little knowledge. See above.
I did a little research and came up with at least 33 who do: Link
[...] only two classes of citizens have existed, born citizens and naturalized citizens.Sorry, all citizens are equal under the law. You are mistaking qualifications required to be president with nonexistent classes of citizenship. A president must be at least 35 years old, have been 14 years a resident and must either be a Citizen from the time of the adoption of the Constitution or otherwise be a natural born Citizen (and must also be elected or succeed an existing president).
Just as no separate classes of citizens exist based on age, no separate classes exist based on how one became a citizen. All citizens are equal under the law. No citizens are more equal than others.
Regarding the eligibility clause, the founders were simply interested in ensuring as best as possible that our presidents be loyal, 100 percent red-blooded Americans who had lived here long enough and were old and wise enough to be immune to developing divided allegiances via the intrigues of foreign agents. The founders wanted a president who lived and breathed Americana, a "homey" if you will, that is, someone who just wouldn't have it in their blood to be anything else.
These are the commonsense obvious intentions of the presidential eligibility restrictions. The founders wanted only someone who had it in their very bones to put America first, not some untrustworthy, ill-intentioned, self-proclaimed "citizen of the world" such as aka obama, the foreign agent criminal identity fraud we are now suffering under.
Those who claim that the founders did not intend to block from the presidency a child of illegal aliens who was merely born here, then raised by foreign parents in a foreign land with anti-American values, who then merely returned for 14 years upon adulthood just to learn how to act American, are either insane or the enemies of America.
The eligibility clause was not meant to be a "progressive" post-modern, watered down nothing. It was meant to have real teeth that would keep out any but those who are exclusive, 100 percent red-blooded Americans without a whiff of foreign allegiances. It was fully intended to be a safe-rather-than-sorry clause that, in the interests of protecting the new republic, would exclude many people who might otherwise make fine presidents.
Wow; that post is a tour de force. I’ve seen it expressed elsewhere & differently, but never so powerfully. Props, elengr. Mega-props.
False! From the Wikipedia:
In general, everyone born in Canada from 1947 or later acquires Canadian citizenship at birth. In one 2008 case, a girl born to a Ugandan mother aboard a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Boston was deemed a Canadian citizen for customs' purposes because she was born over Canada's airspace.[7]The only exceptions concern children born to diplomats, where additional requirements apply.
Section 3(2) of the current act states that Canadian citizenship is not granted to a child born in Canada if either parent was a diplomatic or consular officer or other representative at the time of birth and neither parent was a Canadian citizen or Canadian permanent resident.
Note that Canada shares an exception for diplomats and even goes so far as to spell out exactly what it means.
Why would you assume that we did?
Because it says so in the Constitution.
All citizens are subjects and within the jurisdiction of the national social contract.
Bafflegab! I'm too lazy to look it up, but I seem to recall that the "social contract" was the invention of a croaking, pre-Marx commie.
It has little to do with jurisdiction, which is a government's official power to make legal decisions and judgements. E.g., that double parking is not allowed.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.