“When Congress defines who does need to be naturalized, they are defining who does not need it”
And that is precisely what Ted Cruz claims about his citizenship. He did not need to be naturalized but was a citizen by birth through the citizenship of his mother.
I am flabbergasted at people who bog down in the weeds and see absolutely nothing wrong with the notion that it’s just fine and dandy to strip the rights of an American who gives birth beyond a border line from the baby she bears.
They actually believe the Founders intended that because a pregnant American crossed a border for a reasonable purpose and gives birth while over that line (not saying when the pregnancy occurred in this case, but their “reasoning” includes the notion that a woman shopping over the border who gives birth while there has her child’s rights stripped away), that her child is either not a citizen at all or is not “natural born” and can never be POTUS.
They are fine with that.
They really believe our genius Founders intended such a thing, and they will argue they intended it until they are blue in the face.
Never having the common sense to stop and ask themselves, whoah! Does that make ANY sense at all?
And that is the more human side of this “debate”.
You are serving as a legal, Constitutional scholar in the debate. I appreciate it xzins, believe me. Thank you.
But the lack of common sense, a sense of proportionality, a crediting of our Founders with having better sense than to visit such a punishment on Ted Cruz (and all the others) whose mothers who gave birth to them happened to be beyond a border when they were born??
Boggles my mind.
Tell that to Congress and the U.S. courts, who ruled in the early 19th Century that the children of U.S. citizens born abroad did not inherit U.S. citizenship at all. A number of new Federal legislative acts had to be enacted by Congress to retroactively give these persons retroactive U.S. citizenship, which was acknowledged at the time to not be natural born citizenship. This means the child of American citizens could be retroactively granted U.S. citizenship from the date of birth, but the U.S. citizenship was not a natural born citizenship as stated by the American Law Review (~1850 IIRC).