So according to the liberal meme—excuse me, your opinion—Trump should have paid a negative price for challenging Obama on the BC issue, right, Nero Germanicus?
The strongest argument to be made proceeds off two U.S. Supreme Court cases that draw the distinction between being born in the U.S. versus being born outside of it. Ironically, one of the cases -- U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark -- is one the article (along with a referenced article) holds up in supposed support as a counter to the erroneous Vattel-based challenge.
Wong Kim Ark, as is generally known, involved a challenge to citizenship brought against a person born in the U.S. to Chinese national parents. The Court in a length opinion traced the origins of the U.S. birth citizenship rule from the English common law through the advent of our U.S. Constitution and through the adoption of the 14th Amendment. One of the arguments raised by the U.S. Government in opposition to the common law argument was that statutes enacted (both in England and in the U.S) naturalizing the foreign-born children of natural born subjects/citizens recognized the jus sanguinis principle which was becoming more the norm in international law. The Court rejected the argument that such statutes supplanted the established common law rule of citizenship by birth within the realm.
So far as we are informed, there is no authority, legislative, executive or judicial, in England or America, which maintains or intimates that the statutes (whether considered as declaratory or as merely prospective) conferring citizenship on foreign-born children of citizens have superseded or restricted, in any respect, the established rule of citizenship by birth within the dominion.
Later in the opinion, the Court affirms the common law jus soli rule, while stating the effect of statutes concerning foreign-born children:
The Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, in the declaration that
all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside,
contemplates two sources of citizenship, and two only: birth and naturalization. Citizenship by naturalization can only be acquired by naturalization under the authority and in the forms of law. But citizenship by birth is established by the mere fact of birth under the circumstances defined in the Constitution. Every person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, becomes at once a citizen of the United States, and needs no naturalization. A person born out of the jurisdiction of the United States can only become a citizen by being naturalized, either by treaty, as in the case [p703] of the annexation of foreign territory, or by authority of Congress, exercised either by declaring certain classes of persons to be citizens, as in the enactments conferring citizenship upon foreign-born children of citizens, or by enabling foreigners individually to become citizens by proceedings in the judicial tribunals, as in the ordinary provisions of the naturalization acts.
So the Court notes that foreign-born children who are made "citizens at birth" by statute are citizens by naturalization.
These statements about foreign-born children in Wong Kim Ark are obiter dicta, as that case did not involve a foreign-born person, and as such the statements are not binding. However, this may be less so with a more recent case, Rogers v. Bellei.
Mario Bellei was born in Italy to an Italian father and American mother. He was a U.S. citizen at birth by virture of a then-applicable statute granting citizenship to foreign-born children, one parent of whom is an American parent and the other an alien. The statute provided for cessation of the child's birth-citizenshp upon failing to reside in the U.S. for a specified period after attaining age 13. Bellei did not meet the residency requirement. After he received notice of termination of his citizenship status, Bellei filed suit, claiming that he had not given the assent requisite to forfeiture of citizenship under the Constitutional standard set forth in Afroyim v. Rusk, a case decided a few years earlier.
In affirming the power of Congress to attach conditions to the grant of citizenship, the Court distinguished Afroyim on the grounds that Bellei's citizenshp did not fall withn the Contitutional parameters set out in the 14th Amendment. After citing to Justice Gray's extensive discussion of the 14th Amendment in Wong Kim Ark, the Court states:
Thus, at long last, there emerged an express constitutional definition of citizenship. But it was one restricted to the combination of three factors, each and all significant: birth in the United States, naturalization in the United States, and subjection to the jurisdiction of the United States. (italics in original)
The argument that theoretically could be brought against Ted Cruz is that his citizenship, while exiting from the time of his birth, is (like Bellei's) not a constitutional citizenship in that his birth did not occur IN the United States per the 14th Amendment and the common law. Thus, if his does not fit within the Constitutional definition of citizenshp, then how can it be said he's a "natural born citizen" within the meaning of Article II?
This, to my mind, is the "Top" argument that could be made. (The "Vattel" theory is nonsense, but it's the one that keeps getting attention). Though that would likely require the claim to be brought by a viable presidential contender (which won't happen) who is represented by competent legal counsel (which, failing the first requirement, won't happen either). The curious thing is that so many (if not nearly all) of the articles on this topic simply skirt past these cases and don't acknowledge this argument. One would think even if an author felt the cases didn't apply in the end, that two Supreme Court cases exist seemingly on point would warrant at least footnote treatment.
Has Donald Trump been elected to some position that I haven’t heard about?
My OPINION was that the natural born citizen issue helped Obama with undecided voters.
Obama faced a huge problem in getting elected and reelected: the demographics of the American electorate. Blacks made up 12% of voters and white liberals made up 22%.
34% of the electorate would add up to monumental failure. Obama needed two other demographic groups to get himself to 50%: Latinos and Asians. But there was an additional problem. Neither of those groups are particularly fond of blacks, particularly Asians who don’t qualify for affirmative action programs while Latinos are often in competition with blacks for jobs and low income housing.
But Latinos and Asians could identify with Obama’s foreign born father and the fact that some folks didn’t consider him to be a real American. In 2008 Obama got 66% of the Latino vote and 62% of the Asian vote. In 2012 he got 71% of the Latino vote and 73% of the Asian vote.
It is my PERSONAL OPINION that the natural born citizen issue accounts for some of that support.
If anyone uses their search engine of choice to read political opinion and research articles on the Asian and Latino vote for Obama you will see identification with his “immigrant father story” as a factor, even though his father hardly qualified as a true immigrant.