Replies

RE: If the citizen parent does not meet the requirement of statute there is no grant of citizenship.

But what if the citizen parent does? As is Cruz’s mother’s case?

RE: In other words, the foreign-born child of a citizen parent is not necessarily a citizen.

Only IF the parent does not meet the requirements of the statute. That is, the parents loses his/her citizenship when the child is born.

RE: Therefore, the citizenship of the citizen parent is not the agency causing of the grant of citizenship.

Disagree. As former Solicitors General Neil Katyal and Paul Clement have recently noted in the Harvard Law Review Forum,

SEE HERE:

http://harvardlawreview.org/2015/03/on-the-meaning-of-natural-born-citizen/

All the sources routinely used to interpret the Constitution confirm that the phrase “natural born Citizen” has a specific meaning: namely, someone who was a U.S. citizen at birth with no need to go through a naturalization proceeding at some later time.

And Congress has made equally clear from the time of the framing of the Constitution to the current day that, subject to certain residency requirements on the parents, someone born to a U.S. citizen parent generally becomes a U.S. citizen without regard to whether the birth takes place in Canada, the Canal Zone, or the continental United States. . . .

The Supreme Court has long recognized that two particularly useful sources in understanding constitutional terms are British common law and enactments of the First Congress. Both confirm that the original meaning of the phrase “natural born Citizen” includes persons born abroad who are citizens from birth based on the citizenship of a parent.

Therefore, The citizenship of the parent AT THE TIME OF THE CHILD’s BIRTH IS the agency causing the grant of citizenship.