Posted on 05/11/2020 5:18:01 AM PDT by blam
In a Sunday interview on New York 970 radio’s “The Cats Roundtable,” Rudy Giuliani, personal legal counsel for President Donald Trump, weighed in on the Department of Justice’s decision to drop charges against former National Security Adviser Ret. Gen. Michael Flynn after new evidence came to light showing FBI agents attempted to entrap Flynn into lying to them.
Giuliani said former CIA Director John Brennan, along with former FBI Director James Comey, orchestrated the Deep State’s attempt to take down Trump, which he described as “as close to treason as you can get.”
“This is now an inexperienced prosecutor’s hypothesis … I think Brennan ran this damn thing,” Giuliani told host John Catsimatidis. “I particularly think Brennan ran the Papadopoulos-Carter Page part of it because that’s a very elaborate counter-intelligence plan — kind of a stupid one. Brennan is smart, but if he goes overboard, he makes a lot of mistakes, which is why he was in trouble all his career. So, that one I’m sure is orchestrated by CIA. And who the hell would’ve done it in the CIA but a screwball like Brennan?”
He added, “I think they have Comey. And I think, despite the fact that he got let off a couple of times — and I have no inside information — I believe that Attorney General Barr was saving it for the really good case, the one that comes pretty close to treason, because what they did after [Trump] was elected, I don’t say that it’s treason, but it’s as close to treason as you can get. They wanted to take out the lawfully elected President of the United States, and they wanted to do it by lying, submitting false affidavits, using phony witnesses — in other words, they wanted to do it by illegal means.
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
But tell me, if you would: What power does the U.S. Congress have under the U.S. Constitution with respect to whether a given human being on this blessed planet we call earth does or does not, or shall or shall not, enjoy the desirable status of Citizen of the United States?
Your stupid act really, really does not become you.
By the U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 4, Congress shall have Power “To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization....”
Let me guide your unwilling self by the hand.
Congress is explicitly empowered to define who is eligible for Naturalization.
Only aliens, physically present in the United States, are eligible for naturalization.
In defining who are aliens, Congress at the same time perforce defines who are citizens. Those who are not aliens are citizens.
Understanding this is just not that difficult.
The U.S. Supreme Court in Rogers v. Bellei, 401 U.S. 815, 829-30 (1970) states:
Mr. Justice Gray has observed that the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment was “declaratory of existing rights, and affirmative of existing law,” so far as the qualifications of being born in the United States, being naturalized in the United States, and being subject to its jurisdiction are concerned. United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U. S., at 688. Then follows a most significant sentence:
“But it [the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment] has not touched the acquisition of citizenship by being born abroad of American parents; and has left that subject to be regulated, as it had always been, by Congress, in the exercise of the power conferred by the Constitution to establish an uniform rule of naturalization.”Thus, at long last, there emerged an express constitutional definition of citizenship. But it was one restricted to the combination of three factors, each and all significant: birth in the United States, naturalization in the United States, and subjection to the jurisdiction of the United States.
As the Court observed in Ankeny v. Indiana, Ind. Ct. App. (12 Nov 2009):
Based upon the language of Article II, Section 1, Clause 4 and the guidance provided by Wong Kim Ark, we conclude that persons born within the borders of the United States are “natural born Citizens” for Article II, Section 1 purposes, regardless of the citizenship of their parents. Just as a person “born within the British dominions [was] a natural-born British subject” at the time of the framing of the U.S. Constitution, so too were those “born in the allegiance of the United States [] natural-born citizens.”The Plaintiffs do not mention the above United States Supreme Court authority in their complaint or brief; they primarily rely instead on an eighteenth century treatise and quotations of Members of Congress made during the nineteenth century. To the extent that these authorities conflict with the United States Supreme Court‟s interpretation of what it means to be a natural born citizen, we believe that the Plaintiffs' arguments fall under the category of “conclusory, non-factual assertions or legal conclusions” that we need not accept as true when reviewing the grant of a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim.
But all this is so simple and evident it is obvious that you already knew this as well.
After twelve years or so of peddling birther blather, it is time to put that crap to rest. It went 0 for 224 in court.
...”the power ... to establish an uniform rule of naturalization.”
Bingo.
Prior to the passage and ratification of the 14th Amendment, did Congress have the ability, under its power to establish an Uniform Rule of Naturalization, to pass into statutory law a provision that implements a restriction of some kind (the nature of which is not important to this question) on individuals born in U.S. states to U.S. citizen parents, pursuant to which a given individual born in a U.S. state to U.S. citizen parents could potentially be determined, say, by a U.S. district court judge, to not be a U.S. citizen, and moreover, to not ever have been a U.S. citizen, due to a demonstrated failure of such requirement?
You mentioned the Breckenridge Long article from 1916.
Long’s arguments leave yours in ashes.
The article (note that Long mentions President Chestet Arthur without also mentioning that Arthur had the same problem as Hughes, showing that at least in 1916, nobody, not even Breckenridge Long, knew that William Arthur remained a British subject for more than a decade after his son Chester was born):
From the CHICAGO LEGAL NEWS, Vol. 146-148, pp. 220-222.
———————————————————————————————
IS MR. CHARLES EVANS HUGHES A “NATURAL BORN CITIZEN” WITHIN THE MEANING OF THE CONSTITUTION?
A Legal Examination of the Subject by Breckinridge Long, of the St. Louis Bar.
Whether Mr. Hughes is, or is not, a “natural born” citizen within the meaning of the Constitution, so as to make him eligible or ineligible, to assume the office of President, presents an interesting inquiry.
He was born in this country and is beyond question “native born.” But is there not a distinction between “native born” and “natural born”? At the time he was born his father and mother were subjects of England. His father had not then been naturalized. The day after Mr. Hughes was born his father had a right, as an English subject, to go to the British consul, at New York, and to present his wife and infant and to claim any assistance he might need from the consul as the representative of the English government.
If war had broken out between this government and England this government would have had a right to interne the father, the mother and the son as subjects of an enemy power.
The Constitution of the United States puts a particular qualification upon those who shall become President and Vice-President. For all other offices it requires that they be “citizens of the United States,” but for the Presidency and Vice-Presidency it requires that they be “Natural Born citizens.” The word “natural” means “of the nature of”; “naturally a part of”; “by the laws of nature an integral part of” a system. Following that line of thought, a “natural born” citizen would be one who was naturally, at his birth, a member of the political society; naturally, a part of the political system into which he was born; by the laws of nature a citizen of the society into which he was born. It would mean, further, that no other government had any claim upon him; that his sole allegiance was to the government into which he had been born and that that government was solely, at the time, responsible for his protection. “Native born” does not mean quite the same thing. He might be born in a country under conditions similar to the conditions under which Mr. Hughes was born, and subsequently become a citizen of that Country. In that case, after he became a citizen, he would be a “native born” citizen, but he would not have been a “natural born” citizen. From the instant of his birth this government would not be solely responsible for his protection.
Mr. Hughes was born before the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, so the status of his citizenship must be considered as under the laws existing prior to the time of the adoption of that Amendment.
The only reference in the Constitution to the subject (except that Section specifying the qualifications for President) is that Congress shall have the power to make uniform laws to provide for naturalization. Congress under that authority enacted the following law: “The children of persons who have been duly naturalized under any law of the United States, being under the age of twenty-one years at the time of the naturalization of their parents, shall, if dwelling in the United States, be considered as citizens thereof.” That Statute says that children born of persons who have been duly naturalized become citizens, but become so by virtue of the act of the parent. That is, they become naturalized citizens. They are citizens by operation of law. They were not born so, but, because of the act of their father, are invested with all the rights of citizens. If they are born in this country and their father subsequently becomes naturalized, they then, upon the naturalization of the father, become citizens. After becoming citizens they are “native born” citizens; but they are not “natural born citizens.” That is, they are not born, in the nature of things and by the laws of nature, a citizen of this Republic. If the father becomes naturalized before the birth of the child and is at the time of the birth of the child a citizen of the United States, then the child is a “natural born” citizen. But in the case of Mr. Hughes the father was not naturalized at the time the son was born, and was at that time a subject of England. How could the son be a “natural born” citizen of the United States? If you had been born in England of American parents, would it be necessary for you to be naturalized if you came to this country to reside? No. If he, born in this country of English parents, had returned to England to reside, would it have been necessary for him to be naturalized there? No. If it was not necessary for him to be naturalized in England, would he be a “natural born citizen” of the United States?
The Statute above referred to announced the law of this country to be that the children of persons who should be naturalized became citizens by virtue of the act of their father. And obversely, that they were not to be considered as citizens until their father was naturalized. “…The naturalization of the father operates to confer the municipal right of citizenship upon the minor child…” (Secretary Blaine, February 1st, 1890.)
It is admitted that the legal status of the child, under the circumstances we have to deal with, is not explicitly defined by the Statutes. But any question which the reading of the Statute does not clear up is elucidated and illuminated by the courts (113 U.S. Supreme Court 94 infra) and by official documents written by men in authority and vested with the administration of the law.
In this connection it will be pertinent to make a few illusions to the recommendations made to Congress urging them to clarify the situation. President Arthur, in his Fourth Annual Message, in 1884, said: “Our existing naturalization laws also need revision. * * * Section 2172, recognizing the citizenship of the children of naturalized parents, is ambiguous in its terms* * *.
“An uniform rule of naturalization, such as the Constitution contemplates, should, among other things, clearly define the status of persons born within the United States subject to a foreign power and of minor children of fathers who have declared their intention to become citizens* * *.”
President Cleveland, in his First Annual Message, in 1885, said: “The laws of certain states and territories admit a domiciled alien to the local franchise conferring upon him the rights of citizenship to a degree which places him in the anomalous condition of being a citizen of a state and yet not of the United States within the purview of Federal and International law.”
The United States Supreme Court has said: “The existing provisions leave much to be desired and the attention of Congress has been called to the condition of the laws with reference to the election of nationality; and to the desirability of a clear definition of the status of minor children whose fathers had declared their intention to become citizens * * *.” (143 U.S. 178.)
Again the United States Supreme Court says, in the same case: “clearly minors acquire an inchoate status by the declaration of intention on the part of their parents. If they attain their majority before the parent completes his naturalization, then they have an election to repudiate the status which they find impressed upon them, and determine that they will accept allegiance to some foreign potentate or power rather than hold fast to some citizenship which the act of the parent has initiated for them.”
These opinions indicate where the doubt and uncertainty may be.
On the other hand, Willoughby, in his work on the Constitution (Vol. I, page 283), makes the positive statement that: “The naturalization of a father operates as a naturalization of his minor child, if they are dwelling in the United States.
We find the positive declaration of the court that the “citizenship of the father is that of his child.” (1 Ruling Case Law, 796.) There is no dispute on the facts that the father in 1862 was an English subject. There can hardly be, under the law just quoted, any dispute that Mr. Hughes was at the time of his birth an English subject. If he was at that time an English subject, he became a citizen of the United States by a process of naturalization, and is not a “natural born” citizen of the United States. He became a citizen by virtue of the subsequent act of his father. He became a citizen by operation of law, but he was not at the instant of birth, by right and of the nature of things, a “natural born” citizen of the United States.
And, Willoughby, further on, says: “A declaration of a father of an intention to become naturalized gives to his children, who attain their majority before their father’s naturalization is complete, an inchoate citizenship which, upon majority, may be repudiated.”
These point clearly to the fact that the child of un-naturalized parents is an alien and that he becomes a citizen by virtue of the subsequent act of the father. That is, that the child is a naturalized citizen; that he becomes a citizen by operation of law and that he is not a “natural born” citizen within the meaning of the Constitution.
It might be supposed that the Statute above quoted applies to children born in foreign countries and brought to the United States by the father. A careful reading of the Statute will permit of no such discrimination and, directly on that point, is a document written by Mr. Fish, when Secretary of State, under date of February 11th , 1874, in answer to an official inquiry. The document reads as follows: “The laws of the United States on the subject of naturalization provide, in relation to persons situated as your sons are ‘that the children of persons duly naturalized under any law of the United States * * * being under the age of twenty-one years, at the time of their parents being so naturalized, or admitted to the rights of citizenship, shall, if dwelling in the United States, be considered as citizens of the United States.’ Assuming that your three sons were born in France * * * accompanied you to this country and have continued to reside here, they, together with your son born here, are, under the provisions just cited, to be considered, when dwelling in the United States,citizens of the United States. * * *”
It will be noted that the eminent Secretary of State not only drew no distinction between the children born abroad and the child born here, but that he included all together in the same category and as to be considered, when dwelling in the United States, as citizens of the United States. What would happen if they did not dwell within the United States? What would happen if the father took them back to the country from which he emigrated? Under the Statute, and under the opinion just cited interpreting the Statute, they would, in that case, not be citizens of the United States; and if they were not to be considered citizens of the United States, when they left the boundaries of the United States, how could they be “natural born” citizens of the United States who would owe allegiance to no other power and who would have a right to the protection of this Government no matter where they might find themselves?
The Supreme Court of the United States has construed that Statute and the Constitution, and has passed directly on the point in issue. It has said that one born of alien parents in the territorial limits of the United States is not a “natural born citizen” within the meaning of the presidential qualification clause and, further, said that “such (persons) not being citizens can only become citizens * * * by being naturalized in the United States.” (Elk v.Wilkins, 112 U.S. 94.) Such naturalization can be accomplished by the son on his own account or through the subsequent act of the parent.
Mr. Blaine, as Secretary of State, in an official document to the United States Minister to Germany, again, under date of February 1st, 1890, construed the law pointing out the status of the child if it left the United States. The facts in that case were as follows: A husband and wife, both natives of Prussia, came to the United States. A son was born in the State of Pennsylvania six months beforethe naturalization of the father. Later the father died and the mother returned to Germany, taking her son with her, and they were residing in Germany at the time of the inquiry.
While in Germany, that Government made some claim upon the son for military service, and a ruling was requested from the Secretary of State. Mr. Secretary Blaine wrote as follows: “’The words, ‘if dwelling in the United States,’ whether meaning residence at a particular moment or contemplating a settled abode, apply to Carl Heisinger, who, being now nineteen years of age, has for about eleven years been dwelling in Germany. It is not known that the government of that country has made any claims upon him. But, if the German Government should, under a provision of law similar to that in force in the United States in relation to the foreign-born children of citizens, seek to exact from him the performance of obligations as a natural-born subject, the Department would be bound to consider the provisions of Section 2172 of the Revised Statutes.”
Mr. Blaine’s reference to Section 2172 of the Revised Statutes means that this Government would recognize that child as a citizen of the United States if he lived in the United States, but would not recognize him as a citizen of this country if he lived in Germany. Was that boy “a natural born” citizen of the United States? If he was, then why would not the government of the United States recognize him as a citizen of the United States whether he were in Germany, England or China? The only conclusion is that he was not a “natural born” citizen of the United States; that some other government beside that of the United States had some claim upon his allegiance; that he was not exclusively and by operation of the laws of nature a citizen of the United States.
The boy that Mr. Blaine referred to in the above quotation was not only born in this country but born to a male parent who had not only expressed his desire to become an American citizen, but who had proceeded to perfect his naturalization and who actually was naturalized six months subsequent to the birth of the child. The rulings under the statute hold that the child became a citizen of the United States by virtue of the naturalization of his father, but that his citizenship during his minority, was only inchoate and that if he continued to reside in the United States he would be recognized as a citizen of the United States (not a “natural born” citizen) but that if he went to Germany he would not be, by our Government, considered one of its citizens. How does this case differ from that of Mr. Hughes except in this: that Mr. Hughes and his parents continued to reside in this country? Their domicile affected his citizenship. Had they taken him back to England, he would not have been considered by the government of the United States as a citizen of the United States. The mere circumstances that he continued to live here, and, upon the attainment of his majority, to exercise his political rights perfected the inchoate citizenship which he inherited by the naturalization of his father. Only from the time of the actual naturalization of his father was he considered to be a citizen of the United States, and only upon the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment did he actually become a citizen of the United States. But what was the status of that boy at the time of his birth, and immediately following his birth? The government of England might have exercised jurisdiction over him. That government had some claim which, under certain conditions, it might have exercised. Had he been a “natural born” citizen of the United States, no government on earth, but that of the United States, would have had any claim upon his allegiance. The law of England at the time of his birth was “once an Englishman, always an Englishman.” Not until 1872 did England change that law.
It must be admitted that a man born on this soil, of alien parents, enjoys a dual nationality and owes a double allegiance. A child born under these conditions has a right to elect what nationality he will enjoy and to which of the two conflicting claims of governmental allegiance he will pay obedience. Now if, by any possible construction, a person at the instant of birth, and for any period of time thereafter, owes, or may owe, allegiance to any sovereign but the United States, he is not a “natural born” citizen of the United States. If his sole duty is not to the United States Government, to the exclusion of all other governments, then, he is not a “natural born” citizen of the United States.
The doctrines of dual citizenship and of double allegiance are too well known and too well founded in international law to be doubted or disputed.
“The doctrine of ‘Election’ necessarily implies the existence of a double allegiance. This condition naturally arises where a person is born in one country to a father who is a citizen of another country. By rules of municipal law, which generally prevail, such a person has citizenships by birth—(1) citizenship by virtue of the place of birth (jure soli) and (2) citizenship by right of blood (jure sanguinis) i.e., by virtue of the father’s nationality. Unless this be so, the child on attaining his majority has nothing to elect.” (Moore, International Law Digest, III, 524-525.)
The subject of double allegiance and dual citizenship is a well recognized doctrine of international law, and one with which all nations have to deal. The question has been presented many times and in many different ways to the government of the United States. That it has taken official cognizance of the existence of double allegiance is not only not questioned, but is too well known to need references. It may, however, be elucidated by citing a few of the instances.
An application was made for a passport for a youth of seventeen, whose father desired to send him to Germany as a student. Mr. Freslinghuysen, then Secretary of State, in regard to him, wrote the following: “The young man referred to, under the Constitution of the United States, having been born in this country, is, while subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, a citizen of the United States, notwithstanding the fact of his father being an alien. As such citizen he is entitled to a passport. This, of course, would be a sufficient protection to him in every other country but that of his father’s origin—Germany. There, of course, as the son of a German subject, it may be claimed that he is subject to German military law, and that, not being then subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, he cannot claim the rights secured to him, etc.” (Moore, International Law Digest, III., 532.)
That young man had a divided allegiance. A double allegiance necessarily implies a divided allegiance. His allegiance is not exclusively to one country or to one flag, and a man born with a double allegiance cannot be a “natural born” American.
Again, Mr. Gresham, Secretary of State, held that: “While a person born in the United States, though of alien parents, is by the laws thereof a citizen, yet, should he be taken by his parents while a minor to the country of which they are subjects, he becomes amenable to the laws of that country and subject to a claim of allegiance thereunder jure sanguinis.” On this ground the Department of State refused to issue a passport for the protection of a minor, born in the United States, whose parents proposed to return with him “for a brief period” to the country (Russia) of which they were subjects. (March 9th, 1893.)
How could the government of the United States refuse the issuance of a passport to a “natural born” citizen under those circumstances? That child was not considered a “natural born” citizen of this country, and yet his parents proposed to return with him to the country from which they had emigrated only “for a brief period.”
In 1866 a son was born in the State of Massachusetts to a father who was a Frenchman. In 1885, he, the parent, went back to France with him family, including his son, then nineteen years of age. Two years later the son was notified to perform military duty and, on failing to respond, was arrested and imprisoned. He appealed to the government of the United States, through the American Ambassador in France. Mr. Bayard, the Secretary of State at that time, instructed the American Embassy to use “its good offices” to obtain the young man’s release from military service, but added: “You will, however, advise him that his remaining in France after he becomes of age may be regarded as an election of French nationality and that his only method of electing and maintaining American nationality is by a prompt return to this country.” (December 28th, 1887.)
All these young men were born in the United States, but had the right to elect whether they should be a citizen of a foreign country or a citizen of this country. If they had the right to elect to which government they would pay allegiance, they were not exclusively the subjects of this country; they were not “natural born”citizens of this country.
Again, a citizen of Prussia immigrated to the United States and had a son born to him. Later he returned to Germany, with his family, including the son. On reaching the military age, the son was called upon by the German government to perform military duty. The father invoked the intervention of the American Legation at Berlin. In that case it was held that the son, being a minor, acquired, under the laws of Germany, the nationality of his father, but did not thereby lose his right to claim American nationality, and that, upon attaining his majority, the son might, at his own election, return and take the nationality of the place of his birth, or remain in Germany. But that, during his minority and while domiciled with his father in Germany, he must submit himself to the claim of military duty on the part of the German Government. (Edwards Pierrepont, Attorney-General, and U.S. Grant, 15 Op. 15.)
The only difference in the case of Mr. Hughes and in the case of the subject above examined, is that Mr. Hughes’ father did not take him back to England. But if he had, the English Government would have had a claim upon him, which they might have exercised, and if the English Government did have a claim upon him, then the United States did not have exclusive jurisdiction over him and he did not owe to the United States exclusive allegiance and he was not a “natural born” citizen within the meaning of the Constitution because he was not naturally a part of the Government under the jurisdiction of which he happened to be born. Particularly is this so in view of the declaration of Mr. Porter, Acting Secretary of State, under date of September 14th, 1885, when he says: “By the law of nations an infant child partakes of his father’s nationality and domicile.”
It is not disputed that Mr. Hughes is not a citizen of the United States, but if he had the right to elect, he must have had something to choose between. He was native born because he was born in this country, and he is now a native borncitizen because he is now a citizen of this country; but, had he been a “natural born” citizen, he would not have had the right to choose between this country and England; he would have had nothing to choose between; he would have owed his sole allegiance to the government of the United States, and there would have been no possible question, whether he found himself in the United States or in any other country in the world, that he would be called upon to show allegiance to any Government but that of the United States.
That it was the intention of the men who framed the Constitution to provide that no person should be President except those who were naturally a partof this government can hardly be doubted by an examination of documents contemporary with the framing of the Constitution.
It was originally proposed in the Constitutional Convention that the presidential qualifications be a “citizen of the United States.” It was so reported to the Convention, by the Committee which had it in charge, on the 22nd day of August, 1787. It was again referred to a Committee, and the qualification clause was changed to read “natural born citizen,” and was so reported out of Committee on September the 4th, 1787, and adopted in the Constitution. There is no record of debates upon the subject, but the Federalist contains a contemporary comment on it written by Alexander Hamilton. It reads: “Nothing was more to be desired, than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of Republican government, might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one quarter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union?” (Federalist, LXVIII.)
The interpretation of their position, as expressed in the Federalist, is corroborated by Mr. Story, in his work on the Constitution, in the following words: “It is indispensable, too, that the president should be a natural borncitizen of the United States * * * . 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.” (Story on the Constitution, Vol. 2, page 353-54.)
Of course, these articles are not used with the idea of suggesting that Mr. Hughes’ affiliations and sympathies and present allegiance are to any government but to that of the United States. Any such idea is disclaimed. They are used, however, to show the reason that underlay the constitutional provision requiring a person to be a “natural born” citizen if he would assume the presidency of the United States. If, with full knowledge of the meaning of the phrase “natural born,” the framers of the Constitution used those words to express a certain idea and to necessitate a certain qualification, then their meaning is the law of the land. That they did use them is undoubted; that they knew what they were writing hardly seems possible to doubt, in view of the contemporary expressions on the subject and the actual change in the phraseology of the proposed constitution.
The records of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, the Federalist, Story, the eminent commentator on the Constitution, all agree that only a “natural born citizen” should ever become President of the United States.
The Supreme Court of the United States, several Presidents of the United States, numerous Secretaries of State and an Attorney-General, each vested with authority in connection with the law, have commented upon and interpreted the only existing statute in such words as to disqualify from the presidency a person born under such circumstances as surround Mr. Hughes’ birth on the ground that he is not a “natural born citizen” of the United States.
Take one more authority. In view of the military draft proposed in 1862, on account of the Civil War, under the head of “aliens,” it was declared by the government at Washington that the following persons were exempt from draft for military service in the armies of the United States: (1) All foreign born persons who have not been naturalized; (2) All persons born of foreign parents and who have not become citizens. (Papers relating to foreign affairs, 1862, p. 283.) The very year Mr. Hughes was born, the government to which he now pays allegiance officially recognized that it had not the right to call his father to defend the flag and that it had not the right to call him to defend the flag. The government he now aspires to preside over classed him under the general head of “Aliens” the year he was born and drew a line of distinction between him and “natural born citizens”—between him and those to whom it owed protection and from whom it had a right to claim protection.
Is Mr. Hughes a “natural born citizen” of the United States?
Here’s the link to the article as republished by The Post and Email ten years ago last month (the article was apparently not rediscovered until 2010 — Leo D’Onofrio did not have the benefit of it in 2008 when laying out his posthumous indictment of Chet Arthur’s and his fraudulent pretensions to NBC status):
Regarding Vattel’s “Law of Nations” originally published in French in 1758(?) and with which the members of the Continental Congress were intimately familiar, having multiple well-thumbed copies thereof close at hand at all times, the French term “naturels” used therein, the first English translation of Vattel’s Law of Nations in 1797 translating the French term “naturels” into English as “natural born citizens”, and the question of whether the framers or the ratifiers of the U.S. Constitution, acting in the interim in 1787-1788 can reliably be considered to have understood Vattel’s French term “naturels” to be equivalent in the U.S. at that time to the English term “natural born citizens”, consider the following:
Absolute Proof the Founders Knew and Accepted Vattel`s French “naturels” to Mean “natural born” in the American English Language Before the Constitution Was Written. And Per the Definition by Vattel It Meant – Born in the Country to Parents Who Were Both Citizens of the Country
original finding and article by Teo the Bear in 2010 at Birthers.org
with updates and comments by CDR Kerchner (Ret) of ProtectOurLiberty.org
The below French and its translation to English was found in the Library of Congress Website. If you look at Article III in the body of the 1781 source text below, you will see in French,
Les consuls et vice consuls respectifs ne pourront être pris que parmi les sujets ***naturels*** de la puissance qui les nommera. Tous seront appointés par leur souverain respectif, et ils ne pourront en conséquence faire aucun trafic ou commerce quelconque ni pour leur propre compte, ni pour le compte d’autrui.
Going down further to the end you will find the translation to English. See paragraph number 3 in the 1781 English translation,
The respective Consuls and Vice Consuls shall only be taken from among the ***natural born subjects*** of the power nominating them. They shall all be appointed by their respective Sovereign, and in Consequence of such appointment they shall not exercise any traffic or commerce whatsoever either on their own account, or on account of any other
Translation by Charles Thomson secretary of the Continental Congress
This is pretty convincing proof, in writing, at a time that predates the U.S. Constitution, that the framers did not need to wait until for the 1797 English translated edition of Vattel’s Law of Nations to learn that “naturels” to them meant “natural born”. It appears they were well apt to translate it themselves and understood “naturels” to mean “natural born”. This accepted translation of ‘naturel’ in 1781 even predates John Jay’s 1787 letter to George Washington by 6 years. Thus arguments otherwise as to what “naturels” meant to the founders and framers when they read the French editions of Vattel’s “Law of Nations of Principles of Natural Law” and its clear cut definition in Section 212 about types of citizenship in Vattel’s treatise (as a person born in the country of parents who were both citizens of the country) are without merit.
This finding that ‘naturels’ means ‘natural born’ in translation in 1781 was subsequently confirmed by the 1797 translation of Vattel of the part of the relevant sentence and paragraph in Vattel’s Law of Nation, Vol.1, Chapter 19, Section 212, that is, “natural-born Citizens, are those born in the country, to parents who are citizens”. Many of the founders and framers were fluent in French since it was the diplomatic language of that time. Thus when the founders and framers wrote the Constitution in 1787 they clearly knew what “natural born Citizen” meant when they upgraded the Citizenship requirement in Article II from simply being a “born Citizen” as proposed by Hamilton to that of being a “natural born Citizen” as recommended by Jay as a strong check against foreign influence on the persons in the future who would be President and Commander of the military. And that meaning was understood to be a person born in the country to parents who are Citizens of the country. Such a person has sole allegiance and unity of citizenship at birth to only the United States. That was the intent of the founders and framers for that legal term of art, natural born Citizen, in Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution. This restriction on the type of Citizen who could be President was a national security issue to themback then and it is still a national security issue to us now.]
The Breckenridge Long article from 1916 took a while to dig up (almost 2 years). When it was found, though, it was very enthusiastically received by the remnant that was keeping the NBC issue alive at that time.
See the following contemporaneous response left early in the morning of April 6, 2010 by Attorney Mario Apuzzo to a comment left behind on Apuzzo’s blog the day before by a reader who had accessed the noted Post and Email article, read the 1916 Breckenridge Long article with great interest, and thought enough about it to bring it to Apuzzo’s attention:
Mario Apuzzo, Esq. April 6, 2010 at 1:07 AM
Bill Cutting,
The Post & Email article by Sharon Rondeau is great. The 1916 article by Breckenridge Long confirms exactly what we have been arguing all along. What is important about the article is that it was written in 1916, well after the 14th Amendment was passed in 1868. As you will note, there is no mention of the 14th Amendment in what Sharon Rondeau has reported concerning the Long article. We have been arguing this point from day one, that the 14th Amendment, which only defines what a “citizen of the United States” is, in no way changed the meaning of an Article II “natural born Citizen.”
The Long article also further confirms my point that 1898 U.S. Supreme Court case of U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, which only addressed the question of whether Wong was a “citizen of the United States” under the 14th Amendment, is no precedent and is not controlling on the question of what is a “natural born Citizen.”
Why did Giuliani describe himself as an inexperienced prosecutor?
Humility is not his style.
Perhaps he means that he has no experience prosecuting treason.
But I doubt that will be the charge.
I have read that Durham has recently hired a RICO specialist. And that is something that Guiliani has some experience with.
Sometimes conspiracies really do exist. If they didn’t, there would be no need for the word.
Focus should be on RICO.
Bttt.
5.56mm
RICO is similar to conspiracy, but adds an element of conduct over a long period of time.
One of the reasons RICO is popular is that it can be used by private litigants.
RICO can be used in both criminal and civil proceedings.
As I understand it, it involves a pattern of crimes/violations committed over a a period of time, by multiple individuals.
I have read that with respect to General Flynn, a case can be built that there was a conspiracy to deprive him of his civil rights.
What a delicious irony that charge would be.
Prior to the passage and ratification of the 14th Amendment, did Congress have the ability, under its power to establish an Uniform Rule of Naturalization, to pass into statutory law a provision that implements a restriction of some kind (the nature of which is not important to this question) on individuals born in U.S. states to U.S. citizen parents, pursuant to which a given individual born in a U.S. state to U.S. citizen parents could potentially be determined, say, by a U.S. district court judge, to not be a U.S. citizen, and moreover, to not ever have been a U.S. citizen, due to a demonstrated failure of such requirement?
NO, it did not.
They had the power to make a uniform rule of naturalization, replacing the differing rules of naturalization applied by each State. Those eligible for naturalization were aliens, physically present in the country.
Congressional authority over who may acquire U.S. citizenship at birth is restricted to those born outside the territory or jurisdiction of the United States.
For example, the Act of March 26, 1790, 1 Stat. 103, provided that, "the children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens: Provided, That the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States: Provided also, That no person heretofore proscribed by any state, shall be admitted a citizen as aforesaid, except by an act of the legislature of the state in which such person was proscribed."
A citizen is ineligible for naturalization because he is already a citizen.
Congress was given no grant of authority to meddle with or place conditions upon birthright citizenship of those born in the United States.
Osborn et al v. Bank of the United States, 22 U.S. (9 Wheat.) 738, 827 (1824)
A naturalized citizen is indeed made a citizen under an act of Congress. but the act does not proceed to give, to regulate, or to prescribe his capacities. He becomes a member of the society, possessing all the rights of a native citizen, and standing, in the view of the constitution, on the footing of a native. The constitution does not authorize Congress to enlarge or abridge those rights. The simple power of the national Legislature, is to prescribe a uniform rule of naturalization, and the exercise of this power, exhausts it, so far as respects the individual.
What was a dictum in 1824 expressly became a holding in 1967.
The Supreme Court of the United States, Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U.S. 253, 257 (1967):
Syllabus at 253:
(a) Congress has no express power under the Constitution to strip a person of citizenship, and no such power can be sustained as an implied attribute of sovereignty, as was recognized by Congress before the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment; and a mature and well-considered dictum in Osborn v. Bank of the United States, 9 Wheat. 738, 827, is to the same effect. Pp. 257-261.
Afroyim, Opinion of the Court at 257:
First we reject the idea expressed in Perez that, aside from the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress has any general power, express or implied, to take away an American citizen's citizenship without his assent. This power cannot, as Perez indicated, be sustained as an implied attribute of sovereignty possessed by all nations. Other nations are governed by their own constitutions, if any, and we can draw no support from theirs. In our country the people are sovereign and the Government cannot sever its relationship to the people by taking away their citizenship. Our Constitution governs us and we must never forget that our Constitution limits the Government to those powers specifically granted or those that are necessary and proper to carry out the specifically granted ones. The Constitution, of course, grants Congress no express power to strip people of their citizenship, whether in the exercise of the implied power to regulate foreign affairs or in the exercise of any specifically granted power. And even before the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, views were expressed in Congress and by this Court that under the Constitution the Government was granted no power, even under its express power to pass a uniform rule of naturalization, to determine what conduct should and should not result in the loss of citizenship.
You mentioned the Breckenridge Long article from 1916.
I also mentioned that it was published on December 7, 1916 in the Chicago Legal News, a full month after the U.S. presidential election of 1916 where Charles Evans Hughes was the Republican presidential candidate.
Breckinridge Long was a Democrat Party political hack who penned his partisan tripe in December 1916 after the election, and then in 1917 was appointed by Woodrow Wilson to the position of Third Assistant Secretary in the State Department, reporting to the Undersecretary of State. He toiled away in the State Department through the Wilson administration and into the FDR administration until he was appointed ambassador to Italy where he served from 1933 to 1936. He returned to toil in the State Department until he resigned in shame in 1944.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/breckinridge-long
In November 1943, the US House of Representatives’ Committee on Foreign Affairs held hearings on a bipartisan resolution that called on President Roosevelt to appoint a commission to create and implement plans to rescue European Jews. Long monitored these committee hearings closely, and himself testified in a closed session, describing the State Department’s work to assist refugees and provide humanitarian relief. The Congressmen were impressed, and Long decided to publish his testimony for the public.Almost immediately, Long’s claim that the United States had accepted 580,000 refugees since 1933, was proven false. (The actual number, which varies depending on the definition of “refugee,” was much lower—certainly far less than half the number of 580,000 that Long provided to Congress.) Long's misleading testimony was widely criticized by Congressmen and others. In January 1944, as US Treasury Department discovered his efforts to suppress information about the Holocaust, he was reassigned as part of a State Department reorganization.
In November 1944, Breckinridge Long resigned from the State Department.
Is Mr. Hughes a “natural born citizen” of the United States?
Not at this time. He's dead.
In 1916, when Democrat party political hack Breckinridge Long penned his opposition research, Charles Evans Hughes was a natural born citizen, having been born in Glens Falls, New York. Charles Evans Hughes had been the Governor of New York (1907-1910) and Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (Oct 1910 - Jun 1916), and was the Republican Party presidential nominee in 1916. Hughes was later the United States Secretary of State (1921-1925) and Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1930-1941).
Everybody in America knew that Barack Obama's father was not a U.S. citizen. It made no difference. In Court, birthers lost 224 time in a row.
It was equally public knowledge that one parent of Marco Rubio, Kamala Harris, and Bobby Jindal was not born a U.S. citizen.
Breckenridge Long was entitled to his doubts, and to publish his political hack nonsense, obtaining an appointment in the Democrat Woodrow Wilson administration. His doubts are irrelevant. His rubbish is not citable legal authority.
As the Court observed in Ankeny v. Indiana, Ind. Ct. App. (12 Nov 2009):
Based upon the language of Article II, Section 1, Clause 4 and the guidance provided by Wong Kim Ark, we conclude that persons born within the borders of the United States are “natural born Citizens” for Article II, Section 1 purposes, regardless of the citizenship of their parents. Just as a person “born within the British dominions [was] a natural-born British subject” at the time of the framing of the U.S. Constitution, so too were those “born in the allegiance of the United States [] natural-born citizens.”The Plaintiffs do not mention the above United States Supreme Court authority in their complaint or brief; they primarily rely instead on an eighteenth century treatise and quotations of Members of Congress made during the nineteenth century. To the extent that these authorities conflict with the United States Supreme Court’s interpretation of what it means to be a natural born citizen, we believe that the Plaintiffs’ arguments fall under the category of “conclusory, non-factual assertions or legal conclusions” that we need not accept as true when reviewing the grant of a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim.
Your conclusory, non-factual assertions or legal conclusions, based on 18th and 19th century non-judicial sources, need not be accepted as authority. You are just wasting your time, and killing lots of electrons, citing and quoting that non-authoritative rot.
Let me help you see the light.
See the United States Supreme Court in Perkins v. Elg, 307 U.S. 325, 328-330 (1939):
First. On her birth in New York, the plaintiff became a citizen of the United States. Civil Rights Act of 1866, 14 Stat. 27; Fourteenth Amendment, § 1; United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U. S. 649. In a comprehensive review of the principles and authorities governing the decision in that case-that a child born here of alien parentage becomes a citizen of the United States-the Court adverted to the "inherent right of every independent nation to determine for itself, and according to its own constitution and laws, what classes of persons shall be entitled to its citizenship." United States v. Wong Kim Ark, supra, p. 668. As municipal law determines how citizenship may be acquired, it follows that persons may have a dual nationality. And the mere fact that the plaintiff may have acquired Swedish citizenship by virtue of the operation of Swedish law, on the resumption of that citizenship by her parents, does not compel the conclusion that she has lost her own citizenship acquired under our law. As at birth she became a citizen of the United States, that citizenship must be deemed to continue unless she has been deprived of it through the operation of a treaty or congressional enactment or by her voluntary action in conformity with applicable legal principles.Second. It has long been a recognized principle in this country that if a child born here is taken during minority to the country of his parents' origin, where his parents resume their former allegiance, he does not thereby lose his citizenship in the United States provided that on attaining majority he elects to retain that citizenship and to return to the United States to assume its duties.
This principle was clearly stated by Attorney General Edwards Pierrepont in his letter of advice to the Secretary of State, Hamilton Fish, in Steinkauler's Case, 15 Op. Attys. Gen'l, 15 (1875). The facts were these: One Steinkauler, a Prussian subject by birth, emigrated to the United States in 1848, was naturalized in 1854, and in the following year had a son who was born in St. Louis. Four years later Steinkauler returned to Germany taking this child and became domiciled at Wiesbaden where they continuously resided. When the son reached the age of twenty years the German Government called upon him to report for military duty and his father then invoked the intervention of ihe American Legation on the ground that his son was a native citizen of the United States. To an inquiry by our Minister, the father declined to give an assurance that the son would return to this country within a reasonable time. On reviewing the pertinent points in the case, including the Naturalization Treaty of 1868 with North Germany, the Attorney General reached the following conclusion:
"Young Steinkauler is a native-born American citizen. There is no law of the United States under which his father or any other person can deprive him of his birthright. He can return to America at the age of twentyone, and in due time, if the people elect, he can become President of the United States; but the father, in accordance with the treaty and the laws, has renounced his American citizenship and his American allegiance and has acquired for himself and his son German citizenship and the rights which it carries, and he must take the burdens as well as the advantages."
And try the official opinions of the various Attorneys General:
7 Op Atty Gen 232-33, (27 May 1855), Cushing
We, the independent nations of Christendom, are associated together in a sort of commonwealth of states. To the ties of a common civilization between us are added those of numerous treaties, and of common deference to certain doctrines and rules of right and justice, which not only guide us in peace, but even govern and control us in the very extremities of war. We begin with the postulate that each government has exclusive jurisdiction within its own territorial limits, and a community of jurisdiction on the high seas. As a consequence, each nation is to make for itself such political and social constitutions as it pleases, without any other nation having authority to intermeddle in the matter. Included in this consequence, is the right of every nation to enact such merely municipal laws as it may please, in the exercise of its own sovereign will, which laws are coextensive in operation with its territorial power and sovereignty. Without this, there can be no such thing as the independence of states.
12 Op Atty Gen 325-26 (26 Nov 1867), Stanbery
A question as to status or citizenship, if it arose in the United States, would be determined by our own law; or if it arose upon the high seas, or anywhere out of the jurisdiction or operation of British law, then it would be a question either under our own law or by public law, as might happen, according to the circumstances under which the right was asserted or denied.
9 Op Atty Gen 373-74 (18 Jul 1859), Black
In reply to your letter of the 7th, I have to say that a free white person born in this country, of foreign parents, is a citizen of the United States. (Lynch vs. Clarke et al., 1. Sandford Ch. R., p. 583). I expressed a similar opinion in my letter to you of September 8, 1858.
10 Op Atty Gen 328-29 (1 Sep 1862), Stanton
In my letter to you of the 6th ult., concerning the case of Mrs. Preto and her daughter, I had occasion to express the opinion that the daughter of an unnaturalized Spanish father, and of a native-born American mother, born in this country, but afterwards removed with her parents to Spain, where her father died, was a native-born American citizen, fully entitled to the protection of her country. The question now presented is of somewhat broader scope, but I do not think that the variant fact which it involves, viz: that both the parents are unnaturaIized aliens, at all distinguishes it, in principle, from the question then considered. I am quite clear in the opinion that children born in the United States of alien parents, who have never been naturalized, are native-born citizens of the United States, and, of course, do not require the formality of naturalization to entitle them to the rights and privileges of such citizenship. I might sustain this opinion by a reference to the well settled principle of the common law of England on this subject; to the writings of many of the earlier and later commentators on our Constitution and laws; to the familiar practice and usage of the country in the exercise of the ordinary rights and duties of citizenship; to the liberal policy of our Government in extending and recognizing these rights, and enforcing these duties; and, lastly, to the dicta and decisions of many of our national and State judicial tribunals. But all this has been well done by Assistant Vice Chancellor Sandford, in the case of Lynch vs. Clarke, (1 Sand. Ch. Rep., 583,) and I forbear. I refer to his opinion for a full and clear statement of the principle, and of the reasons and authorities in its support. Of course you will understand that I do not affirm the rule in such exceptional cases as the birth of the children of foreign ambassadors and the like.
10 Op Atty Gen 329-30 (2 Sep 1862), Stanton
Are children born here, of alien subjects, who have declared their intention of becoming citizens, to be considered citizens of the United States? In my response of yesterday to your letter of the 14th ult., I expressed the opinion, in general terms, that children born in the United States of alien parents, who have never been naturalized, are native-born citizens of the United States, entitled to all the rights and privileges of such citizenship.
And let me provide a definition of native-born sourced from a recognized legal authority accepted in every court in America, Black's Law Dictionary, 11th Ed.
native-born, adj. (18c) 1. Born within the territorial jurisdition of a country. 2. Born of parents who convey rights of citizenship to the offspring, regardless of the place of birth.
As for the warmed over bat guano of Long, let’s unpack that.
“The children of persons who have been duly naturalized under any law of the United States, being under the age of twenty-one years at the time of the naturalization of their parents, shall, if dwelling in the United States, be considered as citizens thereof.”
True. Ilhan Omar’s claim to citizenship is through the naturalization of her father while she was (allegedly) a minor. That law only applies to children who have already been born but are still minors.
If they are born in this country and their father subsequently becomes naturalized, they then, upon the naturalization of the father, become citizens.
Pure bullshit. If they are born in this country, they are natural born citizens, and they are not eligible for naturalization. That has been the law since before the Constitution.
That automatic naturalization via the parent only applies if they entered the country as an alien, as did Ilhan Omar.
Had Ilhan Omar been born here, as say Marco Rubio, Kamala Harris, Bobby Jindal, Chester Arthur, or Barack Obama, then the child is born a citizen, since before the Constitution.
Birther cases scored 0-224.
Regarding Vattel’s “Law of Nations”
The Law of Nations is nothing more than the old fashioned way to say International Law. The terms are interchangeable.
“law of nations. See INTERNATIONAL LAW.” — Black’s Law Dictionary, 11th Edition.
Vattel and international law are irrelevant to United States domestic citizenship determinations. United States citizenship is determined solely and exclusively by United States law. U.S. citizenship cases are not referred to an international court in Brussels, Belgium. Vattel was a Swiss author who wrote a book in French and died while the states were still British colonies.
The organic law of the United States is the words in the Constitution, minus the preamble. The words written by Vattel were not ratified, and the courts do not give a crap about Vattel’s definition of citizenship. Such goofy birther arguments went 0-224.
“natural born Citizen” as recommended by Jay as a strong check against foreign influence on the persons in the future who would be President and Commander of the military.
John Jay, who was not a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, wrote a letter to George Washington, pertaining to the position of Commander in Chief without saying a mumbling word about President.
"Permit me to hint, whether it would not be side & seasonable to provide a strong check to the admission of Foreigners into the administration of our national Government; and to declare expresly that the Command in chief of the american army shall not be given to, nor devolve on, any but a natural born citizen."
It is a hint about the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces being a “natural born citizen,” handwritten with Jay’s underscore emphasis. Repeat it over and over with strong emphasis on “born” until it penetrates. A born citizen, as opposed to one not a born citizen.
Also note that at the time of Jay’s letter, no decision had been made that the future President position would also hold the title of Commander in Chief of the armed forces.
That Jay gave a hint to Washington about the position of Commander in Chief does not make the hint the organic law of the land. With the emphasis provided by Jay, it refers to one born a citizen, and not to one naturalized who becomes a citizen by legal process. They did not want foreign princes coming here, getting naturalized, and becoming the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces.
The Breckenridge Long article from 1916 took a while to dig up (almost 2 years).
What a monumental waste of time.
Attorney Mario Apuzzo
Apuzzo is part of the zero in 0-224. Cite his victorious birther case. A losing argument is not citable authority.
What matters is Long is not citable as legal authority.
I also mentioned that Long was published on December 7, 1916 in the Chicago Legal News, a full month after the U.S. presidential election of 1916 where Charles Evans Hughes was the Republican presidential candidate.
Breckinridge Long was a Democrat Party political hack who penned his partisan tripe in December 1916 after the election, and then in 1917 was appointed by Woodrow Wilson to the position of Third Assistant Secretary in the State Department, reporting to the Undersecretary of State. He toiled away in the State Department through the Wilson administration and into the FDR administration until he was appointed ambassador to Italy where he served from 1933 to 1936. He returned to toil in the State Department until his political hackery caught up with him and he resigned in shame in 1944.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/breckinridge-long
In November 1943, the US House of Representatives’ Committee on Foreign Affairs held hearings on a bipartisan resolution that called on President Roosevelt to appoint a commission to create and implement plans to rescue European Jews. Long monitored these committee hearings closely, and himself testified in a closed session, describing the State Department’s work to assist refugees and provide humanitarian relief. The Congressmen were impressed, and Long decided to publish his testimony for the public.Almost immediately, Long’s claim that the United States had accepted 580,000 refugees since 1933, was proven false. (The actual number, which varies depending on the definition of “refugee,” was much lower—certainly far less than half the number of 580,000 that Long provided to Congress.) Long's misleading testimony was widely criticized by Congressmen and others. In January 1944, as US Treasury Department discovered his efforts to suppress information about the Holocaust, he was reassigned as part of a State Department reorganization.
In November 1944, Breckinridge Long resigned from the State Department.
It seems as if it never even once occurred to any given adult citizen of any of the several states of the newly formed United States of America, when occupying his or her respective domicile located within his or her particular home state, and engaging in the marital act with another citizen of that state of the opposite sex, that the natural result of the two of them doing such a thing would be to beget anything other than another full-fledged citizen of that very state, just like them but newer. Such begetting pairs of citizens seemingly did not need governmental prompting, but instead naturally planned their very lives together in part by factoring in this very citizen-begetting eventuality as their parents had done before them, and their parents before that, resting quite at their ease that such eventuality would in fact transpire no matter at what point in time such child was begotten, whether in winter, spring, summer, or fall, at night, during the day, during wartime, during peace, during famine, during plenty, during drought, during floods, during pestilence or regional or global pandemic, during calm periods of good overall public health, during periods of astounding fertility and rapid population growth and large families seemingly all around them, during periods marked by small or even childless families when so many of their friends, family and neighbors sadly find themselves barren or sterile, that their anticipated new child’s citizenship status will naturally be identical in scope and significance to theirs, and that the same status will naturally be immediately recognized and counted as fully valid and enforceable by everyone associated with or employed by or holding public office in their own state or with, by or in the new federal government, no matter what any such government-associated individual might choose, whether in his or her free time, or in dicta for the amusement of their judicial colleagues, or during legislative debate, or in a confidential cabinet meeting, or in a war council, or what have you, to say, do, think, imagine, remember, forget about, fantasize about, fear, desire, pursue, seek to avoid, encourage, discourage, adopt, dismiss, praise, calumniate, grumble about, or thrill to.
It’s as if this must have been universally recognized by all sentient adults as the single purest and most unassailable way, the very quietest and least remarkable way, the most respectable and socially amenable way, even THE natural way, if you will, in which a given state (meaning, a sovereign country) or a federation of states clearly worthy of the moniker “republican”, gradually peoples itself.
Ok, bet.
A wealthy Spanish citizen and his beautiful Spanish wife, sailing north, put in in New York City in 1879. They intend to remain in New York City only temporarily on the way back to Spain but their plans are waylaid by a freak accident with a steam-powered fire engine and pumping rig, injuring the father. His injuries heal only slowly, and in the meantime his wife, now big with child, is approaching her expected due date. The child, a boy, is born without incident with the kind assistance of a local New York midwife on the same day the father gets a clean bill of health from his doctor to make the transatlantic crossing. Three months later the now larger family is back in Spain, enjoying domestic bliss.
The son from a young age becomes obsessed with the land of his birth, speaking strangely of a desire to jump aboard the first U.S. Navy ship he sees passing through the nearby Strait of Gibraltar, be made a member of the crew, and become a New Yorker (he has been carrying on a secret correspondence with the childless midwife who helped birth him and her faithful husband). Meanwhile his mother tries, ultimately without success, to imbue him with the kind of love she has for Spain, the land of her birth, full citizenship with respect to which, and the sovereign governmental protection of which, the son, now nearing the age of majority, has enjoyed without pause or interruption since well before his first birthday.
The father grown in stature and political power in his native Spain and is determined to preside over a dynasty, one major step of which involves his cherished son finishing his education in London and in Paris and and pursuing a career in diplomacy. The son has other plans but finishes his education in accordance with his father’s wishes. Unbeknownst to his father and to other Spanish authorities, the son is told by friends whose parents are important figures in Great Britain and in France, ostensibly only in international diplomacy, but secretly also inextricably involved at the highest levels in the field of international intelligence and spycraft that the Spanish government is planning horrendous surprise invasions and deeply penetrating attacks against the largest population centers on the U.S. east coast, together with other military operations designed to hobble the ability of the U.S. and its military anywhere south of the U.S. state of Georgia.
The son immediately tells what he knows to the U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain, who listens with great interest but turns around to find to his consternation that the promising son of Spain to whom he was speaking has now disappeared. The Ambassador quietly and diplomatically probes his many contacts and learns that although his country’s relations with Spain are already strained and even rapidly deteriorating, the intelligence repeated by the young man from Spain, though fearful in the extreme, nevertheless has its origin with known instigators in Mexico looking to overthrow Spanish influence and as such must be looked upon with considerable doubt from a diplomatic and military perspective. U.S. diplomatic staff in Mexico, Spain and Portugal are quickly fully briefed on the situation, as aee the Secretaries of State and War in Washington, DC, but no further action is taken or planned other than to continue gathering intelligence and to prepare the U.S. armed forces in a general way for potential hostilities with Spain without assuming too great a posture of belligerence on the one hand, or undue defensiveness or passivity on the other.
The boy leaves the Ambassador’s office secure in the notion that he has given the United States essential information that will allow it to blunt the anticipated attack from Spain. He sets as a goal travelling to the U.S. and living there for the rest of his life but in the meantime, drunk with an inflated sense of his own significance and ability to influence world events, he touches off minor international diplomatic kerfuffles in Lisbon, Paris and the Hague, eventually being arrested in the Netherlands and accused of acts of domestic terrorism with respect to incidents that local authorities are inclined to sweep under the rug if the young man can be prevailed upon to regain his senses and stop causing trouble. Meantime his father is unable to persuade high Spanish authorities and law-enforcement officials that his son has only temporarily gone astray and foolishly lost sight of his highest duty of loyalty and learns the Spanish government is soon going to seek formal extradition and later, prosecution for high treason, potentially resulting in the death penalty.
In a panic, the father changes gears and begins multiple conversations with friends of his in North and South America, exploring the possibility of the United States officially recognizing the utter good will of his son toward the U.S. and its people and the fact that, though misled, he was nevertheless entirely in earnest in trying to forestall an attack he was convinced that Spain was soon going to launch against U.S. territory, however surprising all of this might have been to U.S. authorites unaware of his son’s love for the land of his birth, and frankly, his intention to switch loyalties, leave Spain behind, and pursue life as a citzen and permanent resident of the United States, eventually serving as a military officer if the U.S. was amenable. Much to his father’s relief, his quiet (and hopefully untraceable) efforts in this regard begin to pay off. Within a couple of weeks, the United States lodges in the Hague a petition of its own, insisting that its soverign authority over the son and his corresponding duty of loyalty and fidelity to the United States, stemming as they do from long-established principles of Jus Soli or the law of the soil, trump Spain’s claim in all respects, and moreover, that threats of the death penalty emanating from Spain demonstrate that country’s abiding belligerence for anything or anyone associated with or expressing preference for the United States during a period of heightened tensions, whereas the offenses cited clearly do not merit such a punishment under established principals of international law.
There the situation sits for the better part of a week before a conversation is started at the highest diplomatic levels between Washington and Madrid. There being a fair degree of familiarity between many of the personalities involved, and there being a common interest at the time to avoid any unnecessary stirring of already-existing animosities, an understanding quickly develops that the best resolution might nevertheless involve returning the son to his longtime home in Spain. Correspondence from New York is received and considered in which is forwarded the great regrets and apologetically-delivered sentiments from the New York midwife and her husband, admitting their part in unduly exciting the son’s emotions and manipulating him to the extent that he eventually jumped at the first opportunity he had, with the thinnest of actual proof as it turned out, to portray his home country Spain as a war hungry nation bent on expanding its holdings in the Americas and then take off half-cocked, ostensibly to promote American interests on the European continent, but really only to impress his friends.
The U.S. Secretary of State is eventually presented by his deputy with a proposal, approved by all inferior staff, that the United States stop insisting to the learned judges of the International Court of Equity for Resolving the Highest and Most Touchy Diplomatic Disputes Between Sovereign States of Equal International Dignity (ICERHMTDDBSSED) under the Natural Law and the Law of Nations that the accident of the son’s birth on New York soil makes him a natural born citizen of the United States under the 14th Amendment versus a mere naturalized citizen of Spain such that, on balance, the equities lay in favor of the United States as the sovereign with the superior claim to the son’s loyalty and future service as a citizen. The U.S. would moreover transmit a formal letter to the son explaining that his actions since reaching the age of majority, considered as a whole, are judged to be wholly and unmistakably incompatible with a true desire on his point to renounce his Spanish citizenship and corresponding loyalties in favor of perfecting a previously inchoate status of U.S. citizen, and that as a result, the United States renounces its sovereign prerogatives in your case, concedes the superior claim of sovereignty held by the country of Spain, and declares your window of opportunity to capitalize on your New York birth by electing against your home country and in favor of the country of your birth to be forever closed. Spain would further obtain a formal decree from the ICERHMTDDBSSED thst its sovereign authority claim over the son, based as it is on principles of Jus Sanguinis, or the Law of the Blood, combined with more than twenty years of unbroken domicile in Spain undisturbed by any domestic, social or political strife or antagonism between the son and any level of Spanish government, squarely places the equities in favor of Spain and against the United States, and justifies awarding criminal custody in your case to Spain together with the requested extradition which is also formally granted. In return,the Spanish authorities agree to drastically reduce the gravity of the potential criminal penalties faced by the son and work with the son’s father after extradition is complete in the hopes of obtaining a guilty plea to a lesser charge, facilitating the son’s reintegration over time back into Spanish society as a formal and permanent citizen and a regular member of the polity thereof possessed of all associated rights including the right to vote, first in local elections and later in national elections after the son has demonstrated his restored loyalties plus overall good behavior, and employ modern public relations techniques to rapidly de-escalate the appearance of tensions between the son and the Spanish central government in the eyes of his fellow citizens.
The Secretary of State, knowing that his dear friend Woodpusher is likely to have a cow if the United States ever formally concedes, pursuant to the Law of Nation as informed by applicable provisions of the Natural Law, that mere accidental birth within the United States to two non-domiciled alien parents briefly waylaid on their way back home to Europe was insufficient to produce a natural born citizen of the U.S., calls you to ask your advice. He also wants to know whether you would consider coming off your high horse for five minutes to consider how preposterous you’ve been sounding lately over at Free Republic, but he’s willing to take that up with you later.
So, Woodpusher, what’s your take on this scenario? NBC or no NBC? Does the U.S. have the right to negotiate away its sovereign interests in securing the formalization of an inchoate U.S. citizenship held throughout childhood by a young man who could have, but arguably didn’t, make a timely election in favor of the U.S. instead of his home country?
Do you even see that, in certain important circumstances, U.S. citizenship law cannot remain permanently in conflict with that of other countries, and that when push comes to shove, the interests of the U.S. are best served by maturely confining its use of the natural born citizen “trump card” against competing sovereigns under the Law of Nations to cases in which the U.S. can demonstrate that no sovereign country other than the U.S. has even a colorable right to demand the loyalty of and services from (i.e., drafted militany service) the individual in question?
Can’t you see that mere birth in the U.S., without more, could never win the day when sovereigns of ostensibly equal dignity clash on the world stage?
And can’t you see that maturely confining your natural born citizen claims to sovereign vs. sovereign cases in which the U.S. demonstrably can’t lose to the other sovereign is the only way to go?
By contrast, close cases in contested proceedings should NEVER feature NBC claims by either sovereign. Neither party wants to alienate or lose precious credibility with the judge. An NBC claim that is so weak or indefensible that the neutral and unbiased judge has no choice but to declare it frivolous could put the offending party in the position of having sanctions applied against it, any one of which could result in the case no longer being winnable, even if the laughable NBC claim is withdrawn and replaced with the well-formed, well-argued, and potentially winning position you should have articulated in the first place.
Individuals born in the U.S. and who have at their birth at least a one generation buffer between themselves and the nearest person in their line with potential foreign attachments or loyalties (i.e., no closer than the grandparent level on the family tree) are the only ones who always present the United States with a 100% always successful never defeatable situation in contested sovereign-to-sovereign cases. Every other case is fact specific and could potentially be lost due to a superior claim by the opposing sovereign. If you end up being defeated in the end in a case in which you ill-advisedly lodged a NBC claim with respect to the individual in question, how could any other individual, similarly-situated to the individual in the original case (which you lost) possibly be referred to in the future with a straight face as a natural born citizen?
Woodpusher. Don’t you understand that an NBC claim against a competing sovereign must win, and can’t lose, without the losing sovereign being forced back to the drawing board to adjust its municipal definition of an NBC to avoid another humiliating sovereign-versus-sovereign loss like that in the future?
“Long’s misleading testimony was widely criticized by Congressmen and others. In January 1944, as US Treasury Department discovered his efforts to suppress information about the Holocaust, he was reassigned as part of a State Department reorganization.
“In November 1944, Breckinridge Long resigned from the State Department.”
Yeah, I had already come across this information in one form or another.
I think Long was probably brilliant. But he must have had some rot in his heart that festered and spread to his soul. Either he never wished to face it squarely and learn some early but harsh lessons about himself, or he never appreciated the degree of spiritual danger he was in. Either way, he eventually went into moral and ethical freefall, crashing and burning, Unlamented it would seem. A cautionary tale.
But give the devil his due. He did some nice NBC analysis on a vulnerable political figure at an early date. And he seems to have steadfastly refused to take the bait offered up by the likes of Justice Gray in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, to wit: That whatever the term natural born citizen meant at the time of the framing and ratification of the Constitution, the “born in the U.S.” citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment necessarily worked a change in that meaning that must be taken into account when determining POTUS eligibility.
Long recognized that the 14th Amendment worked NO such necessary change. Instead, he saw that the natural process by which full-fledged membership in our domestic polity is transmitted from one generation to the next, and by which the bulk of our country is peopled, continued apace, unaffected by, and unintruded upon, any children that might be born here to resident aliens still subject to a foreign power, or to lawless invaders.
Not for nothing, but NBCs eventually started flowing from the families of non-NBC 14th Amendment citizens. It simply took another generation.
Because the large cohort of permanent non-citizen residents living subject to the jurisdiction of no sovereign other than the good ‘ol United States has passed into history, their descendants now permanently folded into our polity as full-fledged members thereof, the 14th Amendment can probably now safely be repealed without fanfare or agony.
If not, then at least the 14th Amendment should be modified, or a new Amendment enacted, to specify how at all relevant times we are to treat domestically-born people with dual citizenship or two- or three-way split loyalties at birth, i.e., do they have inchoate citizenship, provisional citizenshop, “considered as” citizenship status, a potentially revocable chance to elect U.S. citizenship at the age of majority, what is it, and how shall all that work? But the State Department seems always to have prized the ability to finesse or make fact-specific case-by-case determinations in those situations involving marginal citizenship claims rather than fully face up to the true hash that mass naturaluzation provisions like the 14th Amendment and so-called dual citizenship has made of international relations and diplomacy.
“Prior to the passage and ratification of the 14th Amendment, did Congress have the ability, under its power to establish an Uniform Rule of Naturalization, to pass into statutory law a provision that implements a restriction of some kind (the nature of which is not important to this question) on individuals born in U.S. states to U.S. citizen parents, pursuant to which a given individual born in a U.S. state to U.S. citizen parents could potentially be determined, say, by a U.S. district court judge, to not be a U.S. citizen, and moreover, to not ever have been a U.S. citizen, due to a demonstrated failure of such requirement?”
“NO, it did not.”
Okay, I agree. Now riddle me this:
Prior to the passage and ratification of the 14th Amendment, did we as a nation have the collective power to enact an Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, setting forth a restriction of some kind (the nature of which is not important to this question) on individuals born in U.S. states to U.S. citizen parents, pursuant to which a given individual born in a U.S. state to U.S. citizen parents could potentially be determined, say, by a U.S. district court judge, to not be a U.S. citizen, and moreover, to not ever have been a U.S. citizen, due to a demonstrated failure of such requirement?
A swath of text from a 2010 University of Virginia Law Review:
A. Rights of Recognized Sovereigns Under the Law of Nations
To understand the law of nations background against which the Constitution was adopted, one must begin with the writings of the eighteenth-century Swiss philosopher, Emmerich de Vattel. Vattel’s treatise, The Law of Nations, was the most well-known work on the law of nations in England and America at the time of the Founding.66 In this treatise, Vattel described the established rights of recognized sovereign nations under the law of nations. A “sovereign state,” Vattel explained, is any “nation that governs itself . . . without any dependence on a foreign power.”67 Such sovereign nations “are naturally equal, and receive from nature the same obligations and rights [as those of any other state].”68 Thus, he explained, “[e]very nation, every sovereign and independent state, deserves consideration and respect, because it makes an immediate
figure in the grand society of the human-race.”69
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