Not this one. It was formed by the laws of nature, and of nature's God.
Posted on 01/08/2016 9:57:21 AM PST by Behind the Blue Wall
On Ted Cruz's eligibility, if he's the great advocate of the Constitution that he purports to be, I don't see why he doesn't agree to the public release of his immigration and naturalization file. Yes, he absolutely has to have an immigration file. We know for a fact that he doesn't have a U.S. birth certificate, and without that, the only way to legally live and work in the United States is via the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
If it's true that he acquired U.S. citizenship at birth through his mother, then the file would consist of a Consular Report of Birth Abroad of a Citizen of the United States of America (CRBA). http://travel.state.gov/content/passports/en/abroad/events-and-records/birth.html.
If such a document is in fact on file with the Statement Department, then we can at least say that he was a citizen at birth.
But no, that does not close the case. While there's certainly a good argument that "natural born citizen" means "citizen at birth", there are other arguments to the effect that if the purpose of the NBC clause was to prevent a President with divided loyalties, dual citizenship and natural born citizenship would be mutually exclusive categories, and it's not questioned that Cruz was a dual citizen until a bit more than two years ago.
I'd also like to say that for some of us, this issue as it related to Obama and now Cruz is far from just some wacky irrelevant technicality: the basic problem that America faces IMHO is the fact that we have traitors who have infested the highest levels of our government. Maybe not literal traitors actively fighting on the battlefield with our enemies, but traitors in the sense of people who place the interests of non-Americans above the interests of Americans; they don't place our security above our "international obligations", they don't defend our borders, they prioritize the needs of illegal aliens over those of American citizens, they sign international trade deals that decimate American industry, and on and on.
As it happens the Founders of our great nation were also quite concerned about this, having just fought a war for their independence not only against the British Crown, but also against the "Loyalists" who remained loyal to it following the Declaration of Independence. In yet another of their incredibly brilliant and prescient moves in crafting the Constitution, they embedded within it a clause that would (hopefully) ensure that at the highest level of our government, we would exclude those who might have divided loyalties, and even more IMHO, people who in the back of their minds might know that they would always have an "escape hatch" to avoid accountability to the American people by virtue of a latent claim to citizenship in a foreign country.
Yes, ultimately, a socialist traitor can come from anywhere, as can a constitutional conservative, but I don't see anything wrong with maintaining this one small measure of additional insurance against exactly the sort of traitorous, anti-American behavior and ideology that has been the hallmark of the Obama Administration.
Do you understand legislation cannot define a term if the term is not there?
Not this one. It was formed by the laws of nature, and of nature's God.
Not much information exists on why the Third Congress deleted "natural born" from the Naturalization Act of 1790 when it passed the Naturalization Act of 1795. There is virtually no information on the subject because they probably realized that the First Congress committed errors when it passed the Naturalization Act of 1790 and did not want to create a record of the errors.
It can be reasonably argued that Congress realized that under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, Congress is given the power to make uniform laws on naturalization and that this power did not include the power to decide who is included or excluded from being a presidential Article II "natural born Citizen." While Congress has passed throughout United States history many statutes declaring who shall be considered nationals and citizens of the United States at birth and thereby exempting such persons from having to be naturalized under naturalization laws, at no time except by way of the short-lived "natural born" phrase in Naturalization Act of 1790 did it ever declare these persons to be "natural born Citizens."
The uniform definition of "natural born Citizen" was already provided by the law of nations and was already settled. The Framers therefore saw no need nor did they give Congress the power to tinker with that definition. Believing that Congress was highly vulnerable to foreign influence and intrigue, the Framers, who wanted to keep such influence out of the presidency, did not trust Congress when it came to who would be President, and would not have given Congress the power to decide who shall be President by allowing it to define what an Article II "natural born Citizen" is.
Additionally, the 1790 act was a naturalization act. How could a naturalization act make anyone an Article II "natural born Citizen?" After all, a "natural born Citizen" was made by nature at the time of birth and could not be so made by any law of man.
Yes, since you’re too cowardly for that...is why I mentioned the other lightweights...Clement, Katyal, Laurence Tribe & Ted Olson...so you have a choice of a conservative, 2 libs & a libertarian...
Stop acting stupid. Obviously a couple of U.S. citizens on vacation in Canada is much different than a couple including one Canadian naturalized citizen and a presumably American citizen living and working on a permanent basis in Canada.
If someone is born here in the U.S. to parents who are not citizens and not here legally, we consider them to be an anchor baby. The INS considers them to be citizens at birth, it’s unclear whether that would hold up under any real judicial scrutiny. Whether anchor babies are NBC’s is anyone guess.
So what would have been done with the Consular Report of Birth Abroad? Recycle bin? Shredder? What if someone loses that?
Unfortunately having been through the last eight years where Obama was required to show nothing officially to prove his status, and courts not being willing to touch it, I’m not nearly so optimistic as you.
Yeah, not being satisfied with everything being hidden from the public is exactly the same as forever wanting “one more document” . . .
My youngest son was born in Okinawa, Japan when my husband was in the Air Force.
Even though he was born in an Army hospital, on probable US owned property, we had to apply for and obtain a CRBA.
We were told to use it as his birth certificate and that he would have dual citizenship until he turned 18.
Yes.
That is why I use the explanation where the same group of people did write it down.
One of the glaring ironies of this situation is that the known situation of Cruz - one citizen parent, born abroad - is identical to what Obama’s situation would have been if someone had come up with conclusive evidence that he had been born in Kenya.
Can’t help but wonder, if Cruz folks really did an honesty check, if any of them would say that they would have defended Obama’s NBC qualifications under the same circumstances.
My point was that they were not confused. They considered various terms axiomatic. "Arms" were known primarily as guns, and therefore required bullets, and so there was no need to explicitly define the characteristics of what was common knowledge of the time.
In the same manner, they knew what the meaning of "natural born citizen" was in 1787 because it was built on the same philosophical foundation as the nation itself was built upon. The very word "Citizen" is a clue as to what that philosophical foundation was. They explicitly chose not to use the word "Subject" to describe the people of the United States, though that was the normal term they inherited from the British common law. Where did they get the idea to use this word "Citizen" (which is from French and meant "City Dweller" up until the 14th century. *) to describe nationals?
When writing the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson initially wrote the word "Subject" and then rubbed it out and changed it to "Citizen."
Did you think posting the same thing again to me was going to get a different response?
God Bless.
I have something very close to this, but alas, not exactly this.
I agree with that thought process. I don't think 3 years later it had greatly changed.
In the constitution, but not so much into just ordinary legislation.
No, you're trying to justify your belief that a citizen born in a foreign country is natural born by using a language in a dead law while ignoring the law that immediately followed it.
Yup except a quirk in the law re the residency requirement for the citizen parent works to Cruz’s benefit.
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