Posted on 01/12/2016 10:09:44 AM PST by Behind the Blue Wall
Donald Trump is actually right about something: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) is not a natural-born citizen and therefore is not eligible to be president or vice president of the United States.
The Constitution provides that "No person except a natural born citizen . . . shall be eligible to the office of President." The concept of "natural born" comes from the common law, and it is that law the Supreme Court has said we must turn to for the concept's definition. On this subject, the common law is clear and unambiguous. The 18th-century English jurist William Blackstone, the preeminent authority on it, declared natural-born citizens are "such as are born within the dominions of the crown of England," while aliens are "such as are born out of it."
. . .
Cruz is, of course, a U.S. citizen. As he was born in Canada, he is not natural born. His mother, however, is an American, and Congress has provided by statute for the naturalization of children born abroad to citizens. Because of the senator's parentage, he did not have to follow the lengthy naturalization process that aliens without American parents must undergo. Instead, Cruz was naturalized at birth.
I don’t have so much of an attachment to Cruz. I do instead to Jesus Christ.
But it seems to me that there are people treating the Constitution like the Bible, and it’s not. Law if it’s there should be followed if it’s godly, but people are ignoring the fact that while some things those who composed the Constitution made crystal-clear, like the age qualifications for offices, other things they didn’t, like “natural-born citizen.”
And that was necessary because there are all sorts of different circumstances that someone could come from, and being “natural-born” only goes so far in terms of protecting against foreign influence. Someone who’s “natural-born” could have communist sympathizers for parents, or spend much of their life in a hostile country.
The Constitution doesn’t make a black-and-white disqualification of anyone except those obviously tied to foreign countries, and the benefit of that is the people don’t become complacent to think simply barring someone guarantees you don’t have to look at the allegiances of eligible candidates.
Sure it does.
It explicitly excludes anyone who is not natural born from the presidency.
I will take as gospel what the law says or what the courts have to say about that law. And that's about it.
I am a US Citizen, but can not run for president.
I was not born in the USA!
SCOTUS trumps Levin every day of every year.
It is what it is, a body of law, and it stands superior over congressional act, as a matter of law.
-- The Constitution doesn't make a black-and-white disqualification of anyone except those obviously tied to foreign countries --
That's not what is written in there. That may be it's object, but it's not what it says. If it said what you claim, then naturalized citizens could become president. Naturalized citizens take an oath of allegiance to the US, and renounce all other allegiance. By your read, a naturalized citizen would be a superior choice for president.
How can you be a citizen of Canada and not have that nation claim your allegiance? Your allegiance isn’t your choice. It is claimed for you by the circumstances of your birth and the laws of nations. Renunciation is another matter, but clearly T Cruz’s allegiance was not to the U.S. at birth. Thus he cannot be a natural born citizen wherein no other allegiance but to the U.S. can be assured.
Exactly why the article was written and adopted, to prevent such entanglements.
Only two have evaded this requirement, the last resulting in great destruction to the nation. It is time to return to first principles.
Respectfully, ...
According to our government, the law states that BOTH parents have to be American citizens at the time of the child’s birth.
And I was trying to high-five you but failed miserably. My fault!
Well, we have scads of people on this board and elsewhere who say “there are just two kinds of citizens: natural born and naturalized”
This statement is so untrue, it’s ridiculous.
We are a nation of laws, but when the law is vague, yes then law is that the people are to decide it. That’s the law. The people have to power. The Constitution didn’t define “natural-born,” though it could have, and there was no legal mechanism left for either establishing or removing a candidate based on his claims about his “natural-born” eligibility status.
I was just looking at questions raised about Chester Arthur. His father came from Ireland and emigrated to Canada. His mother met his father there but was from just across the border in Vermont. The family started moving around Vermont, where Arthur was born, but questions were later raised about his eligibility when he ran for Vice President, including rumors spread that he was actually born in Ireland or Canada himself, but it was matter of public controversy and Wikipedia says the matter “didn’t gain traction.”
Look at how apparently Barack Obama having a foreign-born Muslim father affected him, as well as being raised in Muslim Indonesia in his elementary school years. Then we have Cruz being an American citizen from birth, but living with his parents in Canada for his first four years because they worked there.
Isn’t that something that adults can decide for themselves what these things mean?
I had a foreign born, naturalized immigrant father (from Nazi Germany/East Germany/West Germany), and I understand how categorically, naturalized citizens shouldn’t be president.
But in the case of someone who is a birthright citizen, there is no such guarantee that there is some great difference in allegiance and shared understanding between them and another birthright citizen actually born on American soil. As I understand it, both Bill and Hillary Clinton were natural born.
The very intents to disqualify people with other allegiances of the “natural born” provision just isn’t there in cases like Cruz’s. Like I said, having had a foreign born parent, with different allegiances and who grew up as part of a different group, having different experiences, and knowing many naturalized citizens who were friends of my father, I completely understand why they’re disallowed out of hand.
But what is going on in looking at Cruz’s case this way doesn’t at all seem like in keeping with what the provision was put in there for.
According to the law itself that is not correct.
Ted Cruz is NOT clearly qualified, now try to prove your case instead of posting opinion. I stand with the Framers and Vattel’s definition.
I’m sure he will. Go for it.
I lived right across the border from Canada for years, so I knew different people of mixed American-Canadian families. It’s not like Canada is Cuba, or even Mexico.
Here is an extensive article on Cruz’s Canadian citizenship, which he didn’t know he had, and hadn’t used. I can believe that since Canada just passes out its citizenship as the U.S. does and doesn’t require as much in return:
Cruz was born an American citizen.
His parents reported his birth to the American consulate.
Ironically his parents were there to start a business, so basically some want to punish their entrepreneurship.
He moved back to the U.S. at four and never used his Canadian citizenship for anything.
I also don’t agree with you on where someone’s allegiance is. It starts to develop at birth, but there are a lot of factors with that.
The person’s family.
The person’s other influences in the country.
How many years they live in a particular situation.
My mother was American, but my father was German and emigrated to the U.S. in his twenties. He had allegiances to both and though he became a U.S. citizen before any of his children were born, he passed that on somewhat to us when we were growing up.
But, we also had the influences of the country we grew up, and he had allegiances to it as well, and didn’t speak German to us, so we ended up American in our thinking and allegiance. We cheered a bit for German athletes and went to Oktoberfests, but that was about it.
The thing is with Cruz, he spent his first four years in Canada with an American mother and a refugee from communism father in a country that until he was a lot older he would have taken to be a virtual U.S. doppelganger. I am Cruz’s age and I barely remember Nixon’s scandal and Ford, and probably most people my age don’t remember that much. So his four years in Canada would not have impacted him at all. I doubt his mother was feeding him with ideas of down with America and Canada must conquer it.
I also knew a family well where one parent was Canadian and one American. They lived in Canada until the children were late elementary age and then moved across the border to the U.S. The older boy liked to think of himself as more Canadian like his father, and the younger girl like her American mother, and the boy was a little more passionate about Canada since he had to move from there at around age 12 or so, but there was no real inner conflict of allegiances with them. They now all live in the U.S. as adults. And like Cruz, whose mother is American, these kids always had American extended family too, and visited here a lot before they lived here.
By contrast, what deep allegiances would a four year old possibly have to any country, much less Canada? The influences to that age would be his family, and not really be political.
You’re getting into this nuanced analysis of the actual allegiances that he may or may not have developed. That’s not that issue any more than the fact that some people may be more mature than others at the age of 35 is relevant to that requirement, which is not at all.
I have posted for the better part of two days on several threads the information on Vattel, Law of Nations, Geo.Washington, Benj. Franklin, John Jay, and other sources including Supreme Court cases. The “scattershot set of comments” are merely some of my reasons why I stopped supporting Cruz. What is relevant is Vattel’s impact on the Framers. Ignore it at your own peril. Cruz is NOT your snow white Conservative he pretends to be, nor is he eligible.
Citizen, yes; natural born, no.
Called the truth in better circles.
Actually, the best solution (avoiding the courts’ reluctance to deal with questions that belong to the political sphere) would be for Cruz to get a Congressional resolution similar to that unanimously voted for McCain. Since Congress is ultimately the authority in charge of accepting the Electoral College vote, that should settle matters.
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