But you’re forgetting about *really* dangerous foreigners who aren’t really loyal to the U.S., such as Chester Arthur, Charles Evans Hughes, George Romney, John McCain ....
Claiming that, because someone is eligible for citizenship of a foreign country pursuant to such country’s laws, it should trump the fact that such person is a U.S. citizen at birth *pursuant to U.S. law*, is to make U.S. law subservient to foreign law. Talk about standing the Supremacy Clause on its head! I believe that Germany grants German citizenship at birth to all grandchildren of Germans; my reaction to that is “who give’s a rat’s ass?” If U.S. law says that a certain person is a citizen at birth, then that’s that, irrespective of some other country also conferring citizenship to such person.
Not a single state denied electoral votes to Chester Arthur, Charles Evans Hughes or John McCain because they were eligible at birth for some foreign citizenship pursuant to foreign law, and Congress counted every single electoral vote given to them.
This is a non-issue. Let’s select our 2016 presidential nominee based on who would become the best president (and can get elected, of course), not on irrelevant factors pertaining to foreign law.
Arthur, way back when I remember some freepers actually bashing the poor guy. At the time attacks on his citizenship went over like a lead balloon.
All this because of that damn Obama, a bad guy with a foreign dad is elected so some people (95% of whom had no previous opinion on the matter) wanna decide that anyone with a foreign dad is not eligible, that’s just silly. I don’t like Bill Clinton or Gerald Ford, 2 men who changed their names. Anyone who changes their name is not eligible, I so declare!
If it’s the “born in Canada” part that bothers you more Razz Barry, I’m sorry, none you guys agree with each other so I can’t keep track.
Some say you need 2 American citizen parents (so no Rubs or Jindal, who’s parents were legal residents and not yet citizens), 2 natural born American parents (no children of naturalized citizen or legal immigrant non-citizen fathers, we’ve already had 2 with Irish dads, Buchanan and Arthur, I don’t know if either dad had been naturalized yet at the time of birth), 2 American parents who were born in the US (meaning no Mitt Romney, dad was born in Mexico). Made up garbage, with every dime store “scholar” having his own version.
Another point I could make in the vain of Razz Berry’s hypotheticals.
2 Americans have a baby in America, they soon leave and raise him in Red China to be a Maoist. He comes back here as a young adult and runs for President 20 years later after spending his time as a community activist spreading communism and speaking Mandarin half the time. Do I like him? No. Do I consider him American? No. Is he eligible in spite of this because he was a natural born citizen? Yes.
And if we get to the point where some Azlatan Mexican-”American” can be elected President then we are screwed anyway. Ted Cruz is one of the best equipped guys to keep us from ever reaching that point. Quite the opposite of Razz’s suggestion that the election Cruz would make this more likely! The election Jeb Bush would make it more likely.
“Claiming that, because someone is eligible for citizenship of a foreign country pursuant to such country’s laws, it should trump the fact that such person is a U.S. citizen at birth *pursuant to U.S. law*, is to make U.S. law subservient to foreign law. Talk about standing the Supremacy Clause on its head! I believe that Germany grants German citizenship at birth to all grandchildren of Germans; my reaction to that is “who give’s a rat’s ass?” If U.S. law says that a certain person is a citizen at birth, then that’s that, irrespective of some other country also conferring citizenship to such person.”
This point cannot be repeated enough. Largely because it illustrates how shallow and short-sighted birtherism actually is.
Ireland also grants citizenship to anyone with an Irish grandparent, but that eligibility doesn’t automatically make the sons and grandsons of Irish immigrants not natural born citizens.
Not to mention that every Jew is eligible for Israeli citizenship. Are we to exclude them all as well? Where was the birther outrage when Joe Lieberman was running?