Posted on 03/23/2015 8:36:35 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Now that Ted Cruz is officially in the Presidential race, you may rest assured that some of the same people who considered it an insult of titanic proportions to even ask to see President Obama’s birth certificate will be kicking off a similar conversation regarding the Texas Senator. Because, you know… he’s a gosh darn foreigner. For the few of you who may have missed it, Cruz was born in Canada. His father was from Cuba but his mother was a US citizen. As our colleague Guy Benson explained over a year ago, this one isn’t even a question.
For the uninitiated, the Texas Senator and conservative stalwart was born in Calgary, Canada — prompting some to insist that he’s not a “natural born citizen” and is therefore ineligible for the presidency. But there are only two types of citizens under the law: Natural born Americans (from birth), and naturalized Americans, who undergo the legal process of becoming a US citizen. Cruz never experienced the latter proceedings because he didn’t need to; his mother was born and raised in Delaware, rendering Cruz an American citizen from the moment of his birth abroad. Meanwhile, Cruz hasn’t even indicated if he has any designs to pursue a White House run — he’s got his hands full in the United States Senate. National Review has more on this preposterous “debate:”
Legal scholars are firm about Cruz’s eligibility. “Of course he’s eligible,” Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz tells National Review Online. “He’s a natural-born, not a naturalized, citizen.” Eugene Volokh, a professor at the UCLA School of Law and longtime friend of Cruz, agrees, saying the senator was “a citizen at birth, and thus a natural-born citizen — as opposed to a naturalized citizen, which I understand to mean someone who becomes a citizen after birth.” Federal law extends citizenship beyond those granted it by the 14th Amendment: It confers the privilege on all those born outside of the United States whose parents are both citizens, provided one of them has been “physically present” in the United States for any period of time, as well as all those born outside of the United States to at least one citizen parent who, after the age of 14, has resided in the United States for at least five years. Cruz’s mother, who was born and raised in Delaware, meets the latter requirement, so Cruz himself is undoubtedly an American citizen.
This was the same conversation that took place in 2007 and 2008 regarding John McCain. (McCain was born in Panama.) At the time, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama signed on to a simple resolution (along with the rest of the Senate) declaring that Senator McCain was “a natural born citizen” and eligible for the presidency. Given the current, rather toxic climate inside the beltway, I have to wonder if Ted Cruz will be offered the same consideration?
Perhaps a better question, though we’ve kicked this one around here before, is whether or not the Supreme Court will ever rule on this definition once and for all so we can just be done with it. True, we have some federal laws on the books which cover such things and they are frequently referenced when these discussions come up. And there’s absolutely nothing to indicate that this interpretation is any way unconstitutional.
And why would it be? The prevailing wisdom seems to at least have the benefit of sounding reasonable to the layman. Going back to the writing of the Constitution it was recognized that there are only two types of citizens recognized. You are either a citizen at the time of your birth or you become one later by going through the naturalization process. If we have to pick one of these two classes to be “natural born” it seems a rather easy choice.
But, yet again, that answer won’t be “permanent” (for lack of a better word) without the Supremes weighing in on it. And for that to happen, someone would have to challenge it. And that someone would have to have standing to even bring the challenge. You know… the more I think about it, maybe we should just stick with what we have now.
Well, if you can convince any judge in America or any member of Congress of the correctness of your personal opinions, more power to you.
More than 200 original jurisdiction courts, more than 90 state and federal appellate courts and more than 20 appeals to the Supreme Court have had the opportunity to review the natural born citizen requirement since 2008 and not once has any judge or any court ruled that Obama does not qualify.
Congress has never held a hearing on the issue.
It appears to me that you don’t know the difference between a lie and a difference of opinion.
I have not told a single lie or spread a single falsehood but what I have posted does take issue with your point of view.
They tables the cases IIRC. Therefore any of those cases can be taken off table and added to a case with standing which didn’t happen
This has been explained to you before. But once again, here it is. In WKA, Justice Horace Gray traces the meaning of the 14th Amendment's "born . . . in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction" by noting the common law origins of the phrase:
The Constitution of the United States, as originally adopted, uses the words "citizen of the United States," and "natural-born citizen of the United States." * * * The Constitution nowhere defines the meaning of these words, either by way of inclusion or of exclusion, except insofar as this is done by the affirmative declaration that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States." In this as in other respects, it must be interpreted in the light of the common law, the principles and history of which were familiarly known to the framers of the Constitution.
So, the Court explicitly links "natural born citizen" with the 14th Amendment 'born in the U.S.' language. And it indicates that the latter (the 14th Amendment) "defines" in part the meaning of the former (natural born citizen).
In Part II of his 7-part opinion, Gray traces the history of the English common law as to the status of those born within the realm to alien parents, concluding:
It thus clearly appears that, by the law of England for the last three centuries, beginning before the settlement of this country and continuing to the present day, aliens, while residing in the dominions possessed by the Crown of England, were within the allegiance, the obedience, the faith or loyalty, the protection, the power, the jurisdiction of the English Sovereign, and therefore every child born in England of alien parents was a natural-born subject unless the child of an ambassador or other diplomatic agent of a foreign State or of an alien enemy in hostile occupation of the place where the child was born.
Then starting Part III J Gray observes:
The same rule was in force in all the English Colonies upon this continent down to the time of the Declaration of Independence, and in the United States afterwards, and continued to prevail under the Constitution as originally established.
This can ONLY mean (given that shortly after the Court states "natural born subject" and "natural born citizen" to be "precisely analogous" terms) that the prevailing "rule" in the U.S. was that every child born of alien parents was a "natural born citizen." There is no plausible alternative reading here.
In Part IV the Court kicks Vattel and appeal to "international law" to the sidelines as inapposite to the domestic law question of citizenship.
In Part V the Court demonstrates how "born in the U.S. . . and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" was a formal incorporation of the common law meaning of "natural born citizen" (same jus soli rule with the same exceptions, save for the addition of the additional case of Native Americans):
The real object of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, in qualifying the words, "All persons born in the United States" by the addition "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof," would appear to have been to exclude, by the fewest and fittest words (besides children of members of the Indian tribes, standing in a peculiar relation to the National Government, unknown to the common law), the two classes of cases -- children born of alien enemies in hostile occupation and children of diplomatic representatives of a foreign State -- both of which, as has already been shown, by the law of England and by our own law from the time of the first settlement of the English colonies in America, had been recognized exceptions to the fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the country. Calvin's Case, 7 Rep. 1, 18b; Cockburn on Nationality, 7; Dicey Conflict of Laws, 177; Inglis v. Sailors' Snug Harbor, 3 Pet. 99, 155; 2 Kent Com. 39, 42.
So the SCOTUS analyzes the 14th Amendment's "born . . . in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" to be an incorporation of the common law meaning within the U.S. of "natural born citizen" (which in turn derived its meaning from the English common law "natural born subject.")
So you ask for the pertinent language? There it is. If A = B, and B = C, then it follows automatically that A = C, whether the latter is stated explicitly or not. By finding that Mr. Wong was born in the U.S., and subject to its jurisdiction, the Court was equally saying he was a natural born citizen because the Court had just analyzed "born . . . in the U.S., and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" and "natural born citizen" to mean the same thing!. Chief Justice Fuller writing in dissent grasps this, complaining how the majority opinion makes someone like Wong eligible for the presidency. It's a simple exercise in logic that seems to escape Vattel birthers.
You spent a lot of time typing a response that is not relevent because it is not, nor has it ever been, in actual practice. I don’t disagree with the philosophy that you are espousing, but you seem to think that this is actually the reality.
It is not the reality and it has not been the reality. At least since the birther movement against Hoover.
I don’t understand your offense at the term birther. You are the one making the claims, you should embrace the term with pride.
No it does not.
My wife is not now nor has she ever been a German citizen because she happened to be born there.
Just like a foreign diplomat has children born in a U.S. hospital, his/her children are NOT automatically U.S. citizens.
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