Question Ted Cruz should ask: Can a foreign-born American be president?

Sen. Ted Cruz is getting close to announcing his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination. The Texan is spending almost as much time in Iowa and New Hampshire as he does on Fox News; he's hired a staff and collected a long list of fiercely conservative supporters..

There's at least one hitch: Ted Cruz was born in Calgary, in the Canadian province of Alberta. His mother was a U.S. citizen, born in Delaware; his father, a Cuban refugee working in Canada's oil fields. Thanks to his mother, Cruz was a U.S. citizen at birth.

But that doesn't clear up a legal muddle that's as old as the Constitution: Is a U.S. citizen born abroad qualified to serve as president?

I don't agree with Cruz on most issues. He wants to repeal Obamacare, abolish the Internal Revenue Service and pass a constitutional amendment allowing states to outlaw gay marriage, just to take the top of his list. But I still hope he runs — because it's high time we established the right of Canadian-born Americans to serve as president.

Canadian Americans are perhaps our most underappreciated minority. Their contributions to U.S. culture range from hockey to comedy to, well, hockey. It's an impressive list: Wayne Gretzky, William Shatner, Lorne Michaels, Jim Carrey, Pamela Anderson, Alex Trebek. And now Ted Cruz.

At this point I should confess a personal stake: My oldest daughter was born in Toronto. Like Ted Cruz, she inherited U.S. citizenship through one of her parents. But we assured her that she could grow up to be president of the United States. (Proud of her dual citizenship, she says she'd like to serve as prime minister of Canada too.)

A child born abroad to one U.S. citizen parent and one non-citizen parent acquires U.S. citizenship at birth under Section 301(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act,...

Thanks 2ndDivisionVet. Sorry to be a few days late, but thought your comment might be misunderstood by some who read it in the future. Of course we mostly know that "citizenship at birth" is not natural born citizenship. Its legal foundation is the 14th Amendment, a naturalization amendment. Judge John Bingham, the author of the 14th Amendment explained natural born citizenship to us when clarifying to the Congress why the 14th Amendment did not address, or mention, natural born citizenship. Citizenship at birth applies to Rubio, Jindal, Haley, Cruz, Chester Arthur, and probably to John McCain, though I respect Mario Apuzzo's belief that the Supreme Court might extend their interpretation to encompass Vattel's suggestion that foreign born children of military be "reputed" natural born citizens.

Mark Levin's citation of the 1st Congress' Naturalization Act is simply wrong since Congress reversed that Act in 1795 and 1802, living no mention of natural born citizenship. We can only guess at Levin's motivation for his blatant lie, but I suspect that having a lifestyle and family to protect had something to do with it. Mark protected himself, uncharacteristically, by claiming to know very little about citizenship law, an unlikely assertions given his publishing the Madison letter, p37 of Liberty and Tyranny, explaining why the Constitution is bereft of definitions. Next time someone claims natural born citizenship was left undefined ask them to name anything defined in the constitution, other than "Treason" which definition was restricted because it pertains to a monarchy.

Stuart Shelby is either ignorant, or following orders, or both. A Constitutional president of the U.S. must be a natural born citizen. When anyone cites a congressional foundation for citizenship such citizenship is not granted by natural law, the foundation of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Obama did not lie. He told us on his web site "Fightthesmears.com" that he was native born, as were American Indians who were not made citizens by the 14th amendment because they didn't recognize allegiance to our Constitution, that he was born a subject of the British Commonwealth by the 1948 British Nationality Act since his father was a British Subject, and was also a citizen of the U.S. because his mother was a citizen. He counts on the ignorance of most Americans, and on the fear of those who do know the truth from becoming targets of the U.S. government, as was demonstrated when Obama brought the IRS to force Nathan Deal, Congressman from Georgia, to resign when Deal had the courage to ask for written verification of Obama's eligibility. We have been played for fools by most all of our media, and even those who make their living acclaiming their fealty to the Constitution, like Mark Levin and Hillsdale College, either of whom could be crushed by the corrupt justice department and hundreds of appointed federal justices all justifiably concerned that they could never defend themselves from tyrants with a bottomless pile of taxpayer money to spend.

Menuehune56, precedent is not binding. It is a device, similar to mathematicians who use lemmas or previoiusly proved theorems to construct a proof of what they are asserting. It is a convenience without which advanced mathematics would be next to impossible. (I will never forget a good friend who wrote his mathematics thesis, taking four years and hundreds of pages of deep thinking, to have someone find a counterexample to a previously published theorem upon which my friend’s thesis was constructed.)

Just look at the list of prominent Republicans proposed to oppose Hillary, Jindal, Rubio, Cruz, Haley. Do you think its coincidental that all are naturalized citizens, as Barack honestly described his own class of citizenship? Hillary has lots of baggage, but any Democrat can demand that the already stacked Supreme Court (Sotomayor, Kagan, Roberts, and the other liberals) confirm the definition of natural born citizens. Ironically, the court only needs to confirm the definition used in a dozen or so decisions, confirm the precedent asserted by Minor v. Happersett. Democrats can dismiss any of the naturalized citizens being promoted by the Carl Rove contingent of the Republican party by confirming the Constitution’s requirement that the President be a natural born citizen. As Madison explained, the terms used in the Constitution are not defined there because the meanings of words change over time. Madison explained that terms must be interpreted as understood its framers, using terms as understood at the time of its writing.

John Poedesta’s Center for American Progress edited during the Summer of 2008, published reproductions of over twenty five Supreme Court cases with citations to Minor v. Happersett on the most popular free legal web site Justia .com. Justia is Google’s choice using Google’s software in the Summer of 2008. (Jusia.com’s CEO admitted the corruption of at least twenty five cases but claimed it was a programming error, and returned the cases to their original form after Obama was elected, and blocked access to Google Archives so most couldn’t confirm what they had done). The “Progressives” are very well organized, demonstrating how thoroughly and skillfully they will control the tyranny they are achieving, permitting only the freedoms that conform to their preferred form of government. The new “Bill of Rights” will probably follow after they have completed their coup.

All that is needed at the Supreme Court is 4 Justices who are willing to hear an appeal in oral arguments.
Thus far, there haven’t been four Justices.
OBAMA ELIGIBILITY RULINGS AT THE SUPREME COURT
1) Anderson v. Obama (Cert* Denied)
2) Barnett, et. al. v. Obama, et. al. (Cert Denied)
3) Berg v. Obama, et. al. (Stay Denied & Cert Denied)
4) Beverly v. Federal Elections Commission (Cert Denied)
5) Craig v. United States (Cert Denied)
6) Donofrio v. Wells (Application for Stay Denied)
7) Farrar v. Obama & Kemp (App. For Stay & Cert Denied)
8) Herbert v. United States, et. al. (Cert Denied)
9) Hollister v. Soetoro (Cert Denied)
10) Kerchner, et. al. v. Obama, et. al. (Cert Denied)
11) Keyes v. CA. Secretary of State Bowen (Cert Denied)
12) Lightfoot v. CA. Secretary of State Bowen (Stay Denied)
13) Noonan v. CA. Secretary of State Bowen (Stay Denied)
14) Paige v. Vermont (Cert Denied)
15) Purpura v. Sibelius (Cert Denied)
16) Rhodes v. Mac Donald (Injunction & Cert Denied)
17) Schneller v. Cortes (Emergency relief & Cert Denied)
18) ex. rel. Sibley v. Obama (Cert Denied)
19) Sibley v. DC Board of Elections (Cert Denied )
20) In re: Voeltz (Cert. Denied)
21) Vogt v. Obama/In re: Vogt (Cert Denied)
22) Welden v. Obama (Cert Denied)
23) Wrotnowski v. Bysiewicz (Application for Stay Denied)
*”Cert”= A Petition for a “Writ of Certiorari” which is a request for an appeal to be heard before the Court. It takes four Justices to agree to grant a Cert Petition, known as “The Rule of Four”.

The nation of his birth and the issue of constitutional intent aside, the fact that Ted Cruz didn't bother to renounce his Canadian citizenship until last year is a deal killer for me. A president shouldn't have divided loyalties. I'd sooner vote for a Cambodian cab driver who renounced his old citizenship when he became an American than someone elected to the U.S. Senate who still hung onto another passport.

However, none of this is an issue since Senators make such lousy presidential candidates. Harrison, Kennedy, and Obama are the only sitting senators elected to the presidency of the fifty who have tried. That means that 47 senators have run for president and failed (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/23/AR2008012303783.html). Arguably, Obama shouldn't count since he won his first term against another sitting senator.

"...how could a native who has the privilege of exercising the elective franchise, or the qualifications which enable him to vote for rulers, and to purchase and hold real estate, not necessarily be a citizen?

Good question Diamond. Again, for any who really want to understand the legal domain in which citizens, "natives or natural born citizens", 14th Amendment or naturalized citizens reside, read Mario Apuzzo's ongoing legal and political dialog with Dr. Conspiracy and his acolytes, some of whom are probably contributing to this discussion.

Native born residents of the U.S. are not necessarily citizens, were not taxed and did note vote. The discussions in House Bill 61 leading to the amendment process explicitly excluded American Indians ("untaxed"), because their allegiance was not the government of the U.S. The terms "native-born" or "native born" are not equivalent to the term "native" used in Minor v. Happersett, in The Venus citing Vattel as the most concise source, and used in a number of other cases.

If you haven't seen it, please read the Apuzzo explanation and observation of the difference between a "citizen AT birth" and "a natural born citizen BY birth." Obama, Rubio, Jindal, Cruz, and Haley, were all made citizens AT birth by U.S. Code, by laws that derived their authority from the naturalization amendment, the 14th, which was in turn authorized in the Constitution, Article 1 section 8, that required Congress to create "an uniform rule for Naturalization." They were naturalized by a continuously evolving set of requirements created by Congress. The Constitution only specified natural born citizen, citizens BY birth on our soil to citizens who were parents when the child was born. This definition was described by the original author of the 14th Amendment with the phrase "it was never doubted..." That is what is called "common law". Some believe our "common law" is based upon English Common Law, a perception demolished with disdain and humor in his Lectures on Law, by Justice James Wilson. Being a citizen BY birth is thus not at all the same as being a citizen AT birth.

Citizens at birth, as the left, and as Cruz-at-any-cost subscribers would have it, would include the child of Somali terrorists living in a cave north of the Mexican border with the U.S., where he/she happened to be born. The "Dreams" he or she would inherit from his parents would likely include the commitment to convert or kill non-believers, as the father of Suhail Khan, senior board member of Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, a founder of The Islamic Society of North America, promised often in speeches and writing, and as his son promised to carry on, at a ceremony after the father's death. The allegiance of parents has always been important, and still is! Grover was Suhail's sponsor. Grover, who also sits on the board of the NRA, also co-founded the Islamic Free Market Institute with now imprisoned terrorist financier, Abdurahman Alamoudi. It is natural, and from natural law, that to know a man, know what his parents believe. That is the underlying principle applied to help us choose as president a man whose beliefs we have reason to trust. I believe Cruz and Rubio and Jindal understand the reason for these precautions, and would protect the freedoms we share, but want them to be honest about our legal foundations.

Our framers had a similar problem with Royalists, some say the majority of former British subjects, who dreamed and planned for the overthrow of the young Constitutional Republic. As Dr. Ramsay, our first Congressional Historian explained in a monograph on citizenship in 1789, natural born citizenship, which he called birthright citizenship, was reserved for the children of those who fought for the U.S. in the revolution.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.