Posted on 08/30/2013 12:02:15 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
By Ilya Shapiro, Senior Fellow In Constitutional Sudies and Editor-In-Chief, Cato Supreme Court Review
As we head into a potential government shutdown over the funding of Obamacare, the iconoclastic junior senator from Texas — love him or hate him — continues to stride across the national stage. With his presidential aspirations as big as everything in his home state, by now many know what has never been a secret: Ted Cruz was born in Canada.
(Full disclosure: I’m Canadian myself, with a green card. Also, Cruz has been a friend since his days representing Texas before the Supreme Court.)
But does that mean that Cruz’s presidential ambitions are gummed up with maple syrup or stuck in snowdrifts altogether different from those plaguing the Iowa caucuses? Are the birthers now hoist on their own petards, having been unable to find any proof that President Obama was born outside the United States but forcing their comrade-in-boots to disqualify himself by releasing his Alberta birth certificate?
No, actually, and it’s not even that complicated; you just have to look up the right law. It boils down to whether Cruz is a “natural born citizen” of the United States, the only class of people constitutionally eligible for the presidency. (The Founding Fathers didn’t want their newly independent nation to be taken over by foreigners on the sly.)
What’s a “natural born citizen”? The Constitution doesn’t say, but the Framers’ understanding, combined with statutes enacted by the First Congress, indicate that the phrase means both birth abroad to American parents — in a manner regulated by federal law — and birth within the nation’s territory regardless of parental citizenship. The Supreme Court has confirmed that definition on multiple occasions in various contexts.
There’s no ideological debate here: Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe and former solicitor general Ted Olson — who were on opposite sides in Bush v. Gore among other cases — co-authored a memorandum in March 2008 detailing the above legal explanation in the context of John McCain’s eligibility. Recall that McCain — lately one of Cruz’s chief antagonists — was born to U.S. citizen parents serving on a military base in the Panama Canal Zone.
In other words, anyone who is a citizen at birth — as opposed to someone who becomes a citizen later (“naturalizes”) or who isn’t a citizen at all — can be president.
So the one remaining question is whether Ted Cruz was a citizen at birth. That’s an easy one. The Nationality Act of 1940 outlines which children become “nationals and citizens of the United States at birth.” In addition to those who are born in the United States or born outside the country to parents who were both citizens — or, interestingly, found in the United States without parents and no proof of birth elsewhere — citizenship goes to babies born to one American parent who has spent a certain number of years here.
That single-parent requirement has been amended several times, but under the law in effect between 1952 and 1986 — Cruz was born in 1970 — someone must have a citizen parent who resided in the United States for at least 10 years, including five after the age of 14, in order to be considered a natural-born citizen. Cruz’s mother, Eleanor Darragh, was born in Delaware, lived most of her life in the United States, and gave birth to little Rafael Edward Cruz in her 30s. Q.E.D.
So why all the brouhaha about where Obama was born, given that there’s no dispute that his mother, Ann Dunham, was a citizen? Because his mother was 18 when she gave birth to the future president in 1961 and so couldn’t have met the 5-year-post-age-14 residency requirement. Had Obama been born a year later, it wouldn’t have mattered whether that birth took place in Hawaii, Kenya, Indonesia, or anywhere else. (For those born since 1986, by the way, the single citizen parent must have only resided here for five years, at least two of which must be after the age of 14.)
In short, it may be politically advantageous for Ted Cruz to renounce his Canadian citizenship before making a run at the White House, but his eligibility for that office shouldn’t be in doubt. As Tribe and Olson said about McCain — and could’ve said about Obama, or the Mexico-born George Romney, or the Arizona-territory-born Barry Goldwater — Cruz “is certainly not the hypothetical ‘foreigner’ who John Jay and George Washington were concerned might usurp the role of Commander in Chief.”
We could always invade Alberta.....seize it....making it the 51st state.....but then we would have to make it retroactive.
I don't think there's anyone in Congress smart enough to figure that out..........
C'est la Vie
Lord ! And groan!
He is a citizen by statute, yes. I do not say he is not a U.S. citizen. I say that according to the words of our Reps. and Senators, as well as Yale Profs, etc. he is not a “natural-born citizen”.
NOT my words, http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pur1.32754077957292;view=1up;seq=1
It has always been so. Can we ignore this in favor of our chosen candidate?
Well, some folks say George Washington and the first congress did.
Run, Ted, RUN!! We need you!! The nation needs you!! We are fighting for our very right to survive as a free nation!!
No one “knows”, and that’s the only issue. As I posted earlier, the courts have been mute on the question as it specifically pertains to presidential qualifications, up to now. There is no possibility that any federal court will rule on this before the 2016 election. We’ll have to wait until Cruz is elected to see where this ends.
Folks can have any opinion that they want to have. The fact remains that 16 different courts or state election boards have ruled that Obama is indeed a natural born citizen and Congress has never held a single minute of hearings on the issue.
If Senator Cruz runs (and I would love to see a Palin/Cruz ticket), the courts will rule on his eligibility just like they have for Barry; and Senator Cruz will either have judicial backup or he won’t.
As long as there is a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, the electoral will of the American voter will always take precedence over judicial intervention in a national election. That will NEVER happen.
Read the article above carefully and my comments carefully, because no matter how many times you ask, you’re going to get the same answer. This thread is my advance notice.
IF he runs and IF he’s the strongest conservative running (which I’m pretty sure he will be) I’ll support Ted Cruz as a natural born citizen and constitutionally qualified candidate for the President of United States to the HILT!!
And I’m pretty sure that most freepers and most grassroots tea party conservatives will be right there with us. Those who wish to work against us on this and torpedo his chances thus allowing the democrats and GOP-e RINOs free reign to continue destroying America are certainly free to do so. Somewhere else. I won’t try to stop them or beg them to stay here.
Free Republic—Securing the Blessings of Liberty to Ourselves and our Posterity!!
Rebellion is ON!!
Don’t tread on me!!
I'm not buying your pharisaical bullsh-t dude...what you say is truth and honor is nothing of the sort. How dare you insult our Founders by thinking they were writing a bureaucratic suicide pact. Your analysis is pathetic. Go back to sleep......
No....we do not need to become like the democrats. But....we do need to deliver our candidate to victory. Heck.....even Bob Dole would have been better than a second term of "Slick Willy"!
.........not much.....but better.....
Even the Supreme Court has used the terms native born and natural born interchangeably. That’s because they ARE interchangeable and synonymous.
Schneider v. Rusk (1964):
“We start from the premise that the rights of citizenship of the native born and of the naturalized person are of the same dignity and are coextensive. The only difference drawn by the Constitution is that only the ‘ natural born’ citizen is eligible to be President. Art. II, s 1.”
Thanks Seizethecarp.
I agree. And like Jim says, if Cruz is the best we have, I’ll support him 110%. I don’t like the fact that the media and the Dims already have this issue to exploit, but you play the hand you’re dealt.
I however, won’t resort to attacking fellow Freepers as liberals and RINOS, using Alinsky tactics of deflect and ridicule, or questioning anyones patriotism just because they won’t agree with me *right this minute*, and I’m disgusted by those who will. I believe that every long-term member of this forum is an honorable American patriot, even when I disagree with their stated opinions, and I’m quite unlikely to just sit down and shut up because someone disagrees with me.
God’s will be done.
Ted Cruz or somebody like him 2016.
The important issue on this thread can be summarized as, “How are patriots in the very near term to effectively resist an advancing world-class effort designed and coordinated to “fundamentally” change America’s culture and institutions?” (see our current government, military, schools, ghettos, etc.)
Most of us still bristle at the thought of how easy it was for a Marxist to sidestep the requirements of qualifying for the highest office in the land; one who initially gave us the finger and then later produced patently fabricated documents that elsewhere would immediately raise criminal issues
Some of us eventually came to hope that our state and federal Republican leaders actually were paying attention. That they believed it better an amateur be given the office - rather than risk national security with an extremely coarse, “good little Marxist”, Hillary “WTF” Clinton.
If, and perhaps only when, our choice becomes between the two, one could argue it is clearly time to set aside the niceties and even the logic of our views and acknowledge that the Constitution faces a serious struggle. That will be the point when we call in the air strike on our position in order to survive.
Then, if we do so successfully, one of the first items of business should be to resolve the NBC issue. That should not be difficult.
1. Even CNN gets it right and discerns a "foreign" element when it states: The entire purpose of the “natural born Citizen” clause in the Constitution was to guard against aristocracy setting up shop in America and taking over.
2. Nothing in any of the Acts, holdings, records or writings I have seen expressly provides the child of a foreign citizen is a NBC in the context of the Constitution.
Do you think any of our founding fathers, if faced with the tyranny that has infected our government for the last 100 years culminating in the election in 2008 with a sociopathic narcissistic dictator who cares nothing about the constitution of individual liberty, would have quibbled over the meaning of three archaic words in the document they drafted while the country was being systematically transformed away from the Republic they established?
Mhg, we are facing tyranny and you want to quibble about three words that might determine whether a modern day George Washington should or should not be President in 2016?
If we don't elect Ted Cruz or someone like him by then, then there we be nothing left of our Constitution to quibble about.
We are in a Revolutionary war right now. A war to restore our republic. The fate of the republic does not rest on the meaning of "Natural Born Citizen". Lets not pretend it does.
No they haven't....and no they aren't!
“We start from the premise that the rights of citizenship of the native born and of the naturalized person are of the same dignity and are coextensive. The only difference drawn by the Constitution is that only the ‘ natural born’ citizen is eligible to be President. Art. II, s 1.”
The "Native Born" is being compared to the "Naturalized Person".......not the "Natural Born". You need to read this again....more slowly.........
Three types; Natural Born; Native Born; Naturalized!
Like I said somewhere earlier........."Most folks cannot differentiate between Natural Born and Native Born. To them....it's all the same."
Well.......it's not!
Nice try at parsing but they are equating native born and natural born.
The essence of our current calamity is that the Constitution has been set aside so often now that even directions for whom may be eligible for the office of president is purely utilitarian. IF Ted Cruz is about to be the republicants' nominee, the left will do what it has always done so successfully, it will seek to hold us to the purest application of a document that is already in a sad state of abrogation. The democrips never let honesty, truth, honor, or legitimacy stand in their way, they just use those things as bludgeons and never stand by same.
Do you think the arguments so far presented trying to twist the meaning of the Constitution to accommodate Cruz can stand up to the media onslaught? I don't. And therein is the rub. I don't care now, because the Constitution is no longer setting the standard for the rule of law.
Democrips and Republicants alike have abrogated their oaths and passed and enforced legislation which contradicts the Constitution. Roe v Wade is a glaring example of the so called supreme Court doing likewise.
We are at the end of days of what was a Constitutional Republic. Whether Cruz is Constitutionally eligible or not is not the issue facing us, though that is what we are being whipped into a frenzy to focus upon. I personally do not believe Ted Cruz fits the meaning as the founders held it for natural born citizen. And it doesn't matter now, anyway!
As you point out, we the people are fighting for our continued existence as a free people, well, comparatively free. We have been made into indentured servants (tax slaves by another name) to a world-wide financial oligarchy which has placed into office several presidents who have furthered the oligarch's goals. The nation's economy is collapsing around us yet we are arguing whether Cruz is an NBC. What will Cruz do to turn the ship around, THAT is what we should be discussing.
I can hope that we the people have Ted Cruz's ear on issues vital to our national survival. But do we? I don't care if Cruz is not an NBC, if he has the proper focus, to return the rule of Law and turn the debt plummet around, then he is the man I will support for the office. If we spend all our time on debating the purity of his eligibility, we will lose any initiative we currently hold regarding the outrage of the people.
When I ask the same question over and over, the one which Jim responded to, I am seeking to put the issue into the distant past, first. THEN it becomes time to expose our dire situation in all the gory details, so we see which is in fact the issue which will direct our voting. It sure as heck better not be whether Ted Cruz is an NBC.
In that regard, Jim's approach may be powerful; 'it seems some of the founders would have considered Cruz eligible'. And that is as far as we need go. Let the testy play at word games. We are a dying Constitutional Republic. Unless we stop the bleeding we will not get the chance to re-establish another viable Constitutional Republic.
I did read it. I have read much on this topic. I am not afraid to read, nor am I interpreting the words, and statements of the very people who wish to do away with the eligibility restrictions. They didn’t/don’t believe it should matter anymore because it excludes people whose dream it is to one day be President, or prevents an otherwise terrific candidate (like Cruz) from running.
THOSE people who filed resolution after resolution, since the early ‘70s, do not want the citizenship clause left in the Constitution. They tried to make their case, and in doing so had to state the reasons.
The reasons all center around allowing for those U.S. citizens who have been naturalized, or whose eligibility may be in question due to being born in a foreign country to U.S. parents (serving our government), foreign children adopted by U.S. citizens, to be considered eligible in spite of not being BORN in the U.S.
They said this, not me. I ask again, what has changed in the past nine years?
June ‘03, and April ‘05 saw yet more of the same Joint Resolutions being advanced.
Fine, you can support Cruz all day long. I’m not calling on you to change your mind of course. I am presenting proof that our Reps have all along known of the restrictions, they have tried many times to amend the Constitution and have yet to be successful. Those Reps agree with you that it shouldn’t matter where a President is actually born, just that he/she obtained U.S. citizenship by some legal means.
However, according to their statements one must still be born in the U.S. without that desired amendment being passed. How to reconcile this with the folks that don’t give a darn where Cruz was born? I don’t know.
Our Congressmen, Senators, learned Professors all agreed on this one point just nine years ago. Birth in the U.S. was required. Again, I am not presenting my opinion here. It’s why I provided a link to the Joint Resolution, it’s all there in official records.
Does this make me wrong, or bad for pointing this out? Seems like you might just think so. But it is what it is.
I am a million times fine with abiding by our U.S. Constitution as written, and the amendments.
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