TED CRUZ RESPONDS TO TRUMP’S BIRTHER CLAIMS — [VIDEO]

TheRightScoop ^ | 1/6/16 | RightScoop

[RegulatorCountry]

You were born a citizen under US jurisdiction to a citizen father and an alien mother. To my understanding, after having spent a fair amount of time researching back in 2008-09, if no foreign jurisdiction has a legitimate legal claim upon you due to the circumstance of your birth, then you are a natural born citizen. Being a citizen of another nation due to their particular laws regarding citizenship at birth would create a problem. Whether or not that problem could be resolved as far as eligibility to the Presidency is an open question.

[Cboldt]

I am going to add a category. Some may argue that it is exactly the same as and repetitive of birthright citizen, but there is evidence that the authors of the 14th amendment did not intend for the 14th amendment to affect or change the conditions for attaching birthright/natural born citizen. So, adding the 14th amendment category facilitates discussion of the meaning of the "born in the united states and subject to the jurisdiction" group of 14th amendment citizens. Basically, this group has two components, born in the US to US citizens, and born in the US to aliens.

• birthright citizen [another term for natural born citizen]
• 14th amendment "born in the US" citizen
• citizen by operation of statute
  • statute provides citizenship attaches at birth when the statutory conditions are met [technically, this is naturalization, even though no naturalization procedure applies. See Rogers v. Bellei, 401 U.S. 815 (1971) for discussion. Most people claim that citizen at birth by operation of statute is the same as natural born citizen]
  • statute provides citizenship attaches after birth, provided the statutory conditions are met [usually referred to as naturalized citizen]

[Cboldt]

-- The ruling in Rogers confirms that Cruz can serve as president: He was born of an American (citizen) parent, and lived for 5 consecutive years in the U.S. between the ages of 14 and 28 (he came to the U.S. at age 4). --

FWIW, the residency requirement pertains to the citizen parent. Some past US laws pertaining to citizenship would strip citizenship from the child, if the child didn't meet residency requirements. That statutory "citizenship stripping" power (upheld in Rogers) does not play for a birth abroad in 1970. Cruz could have lived in Canada his whole life without losing his US citizenship.

[cynwoody]

Cruz claims that his condition is covered by the Naturalization Act of 1790 yet doesn't mention the fact that his condition is actually covered by the Act which repealed it in 1795.

The 1790 act demonstrates the original intent of the Framers with respect to the term "natural born citizen". They thought it meant what normal people today think it means: citizen by birth. They had no need to cite obscure Swiss legal experts.

The fact that later laws omit the term "natural born" is irrelevant. The omission of the phrase is understandable, given that "natural born" only pertains to two jobs in the United States.

[Uncle Sham]

These same people by and large removed the term natural born citizen from the description and yet retained the term natural born citizen in the Constitution. Please explain why they did this. If, as you feel, they were expressing their original intent as to the meaning of natural born citizenship in 1790, what were they expressing by removing the term in 1795? Isn’t this the crux of the issue? You seem perfectly willing to give them credit for their intent in 1790 yet act like there was no intent in 1795.

[cynwoody]

They didn’t think the issue was all that important. “Natural born” was safely in the Constitution. Everyone knew what it meant. It only applied to presidential elections, not normal business. They obviously thought it was properly defined, and there was no need to keep using the term in mundane immigration legislation.

In any case, what matters is what they thought it meant when they drafted the Constitution. Later doesn’t count. Later needs two third of the Congress and three fourths of the state legislatures.

[Uncle Sham]

OK, My question is this. Do you think that the combination of what they presented within their use and then removal of the term natural born citizen in the Acts of 1790 and 1795 in describing the same set of conditions gives us a clue as to whether or not location of birth was relevant to the definition? It certainly appears this way to me.

[cynwoody]

Congress's use of the NBC term in 1790 gives us a good read as to how it was understood when the Constitution was drafted and passed. As a certain Texas lawyer pointed out the other day.

Their failure to use NBC in 1795 is indicative of nothing, except perhaps that they just didn't think it was all that important. After all, it was already safely in the Constitution, and if that Austrian prince Ferdinand Maximilian had tried to run for President (instead of Emperor of Mexico), well, it just wouldn't have been legal!

Even if Congress had meant to redefine the meaning of NBC in 1795, they lacked the power. They would have needed two thirds of their members and three quarters of the states.

[Uncle Sham]

You are claiming that they gave us a good read as to how they understood the term natural born citizen in the Act of 1790. You then state that they needed to pass an amendment to change the meaning that had been safely placed into the Constitution. The Act of 1790 was not an amendment, so the description they gave has no effect on what the original interpretation might have been. That they eliminated their 1790 description with the 1795 one indicates that perhaps the 1790 version did not reflect their original meaning of the term.

Congress certainly has the power to change Acts of Congress. It could very well have been that they revised the Act of 1790 because the description they had placed in it did not match what their original intent was and wanted to remove/correct their mistake. They may have come to the conclusion that Congress did not have the authority to re-define the term natural born citizen without an amendment process and thus removed it from the Act.

My point is that you cannot look at just the 1790 Act for guidance on this issue. Both Acts and the change made in reference to the term natural born citizen to just citizen together tell us something very important.

[cynwoody]

The Act of 1790 was not an amendment, so the description they gave has no effect on what the original interpretation might have been.

It's convincing evidence of what they thought it meant, and, therefore, how the Constitution should be interpreted. It shoots down de Vattel, etc. SCOTUS frequently engages in such lines of reasoning.

The fact that the 1795 act does not use the term NBC does not mean they were contradicting the 1790 act with respect to NBC. They could easily have written "citizen, but shall not be deemed to be natural born." But they did not. And, even if they had, they don't get to change their mind about the meaning of the Constitution without going through the amendment process.