Posted on 01/16/2016 5:15:49 PM PST by John Valentine
I shall show that the Constitution contemplates two types of Citizen: those that acquire their citizenship at birth and those who acquire their Citizenship at a later time. The first are referred to in the Constitution as 'natural born' and the second is a class of citizen not specifically named but implied and are those we consider 'naturalized citizens.'
The word 'citizen' including derivative forms appears only eleven times in the Constitution. We shall look at each instance and derive what is possible from each usage and instance. By the end, I hope to have exhaustively shown that within the 'four corners' of the Constitution, two and only two types or classes of citizen are identified or implied: citizens by birth and citizens by naturalization. There is no third subset of citizen to be differentiated from among the two classes of citizen identified or implied in the Constitution.
Instance 1: Article I, Section 2, Clause 2
No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.
This clause establishes three requirements for eligibility to membership in the Untied States House of Representative. They are:
1. Age of at least 25 years
2. A citizen of the United States for at least 7 years
3. An inhabitant of the state from which elected
Notice, please, that the citizenship requirement requires fewer years than does the age requirement. This fact requires acceptance of the notion that an individual can become a citizen at some time long after being born, and implies things about citizenship: first that individuals can be citizens, and second that there can be a time in the life of the individual before the individual became a citizen.
This is important: there is nothing in this clause that says or implies anything about citizenship by birth.
Instance 2: Article I, Section 2, Clause 3
No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.
This clause establishes three requirements for eligibility to membership in the Untied States Senate. They are:
1. Age of at least 30 years
2. A citizen of the United States for at least 9 years
3. An inhabitant of the state from which elected
Notice, please, that the citizenship requirement again requires fewer years than does the age requirement. This fact requires acceptance of the notion that an individual can become a citizen at some time long after being born, and implies things about citizenship: first that individuals can be citizens, and second that there can be a time in the life of the individual before the individual became a citizen.
This is important: there is nothing in this clause that says or implies anything about citizenship by birth.
Instances 3 and 4: Article II, Section 1, Clause 5
No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
This clause establishes three requirements for eligibility for service as President of the Untied States. They are:
1. Age of at least 35 years
2. A natural born citizen of the United States or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution
3. Resident within the United States for at least 14 years
Notice here that a different citizenship requirement is established: in fact, two alternative requirements. We need not concern ourselves with the second, which concerns the Framer's generation and has no application to anyone alive today.
As to the first we see that the citizenship requirement has no specific requirement for its duration. Instead, it refers to a citizenship deriving from the circumstances of birth.
This is a distinctly different citizenship requirement than those for the House of Representatives or Senate. The citizenship requirements for the House of Representatives and Senate could encompass the same class of citizen contemplated by the requirement for Presidential eligibility. We do know that historically individuals have served both in the Senate and as President so the requirements cannot be mutually exclusive.
Logically, we can conclude that the citizenship requirement for eligibility to the Presidency would also be sufficient to establish eligibility for the House of Representatives and Senate.
Thus far there are two classes of citizen established or implied by the language of the Constitution: (1) a class of citizen (natural born) which is derived by the circumstances of birth and which suffices to establish the citizenship component for eligibility for membership in the House of Representatives and Senate, and for service as President, and (2) another class of citizenship which does not depend on the circumstances of birth and can be acquired many years after the birth of an individual and which suffices to establish the citizenship component for eligibility for membership in the House of Representatives and Senate, but not for service as President.
For clarity, going forward I will refer to these two classes of citizen as follows:
As to the first class, these are 'natural born'
As to the second class, these are 'naturalized'
This is important: Thus far there is no third class of citizenship discussed, implied or established within the four corners of the Constitution.
Instances 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9: Article III, Section 2, Clause 5
The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;—to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;—to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;—to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;—to Controversies between two or more States,— between a State and Citizens of another State,—between Citizens of different States,—between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.
This clause does not establish a further class of citizen. As for the first four instances mentioned in this clause, these by implication refer to the classes of citizen mentioned in Article 1, Section 2, Clause 2 and in Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3; that is, those mentioned above as natural born or naturalized. As for the fifth instance, this refers to a citizens of a foreign State and therefore not relevant to this discussion.
This is important: Nothing in this clause references or establishes a third class of citizenship.
Instances 10 and 11: Article IV, Section 2, Clause 1
The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.
This clause, too, does not establish a further class of citizen, and the two instances mentioned in this clause, by implication refer to the classes of citizen mentioned in Article 1, Section 2, Clause 2 and in Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3; that is those mentioned above as natural born or naturalized.
Thus we have exhausted every mention of the word citizen and all its derivative forms, plural, etc. that are found in the Constitution of the United States.
It is demonstrated that there are only two classes of citizen established within the Articles, Sections and Clauses of the Constitution.
These classes are:
1. natural born
2. naturalized
All citizens must belong to one of these classes. If a citizen is not naturalized only one other possibility has been identified: natural born. All citizens are either naturalized or natural born; there is not other possibility.
Obviously, this analysis will categorize any citizen acquiring citizenship by birth as natural born. Some argue that only SOME citizens acquiring citizenship by birth are to be classed as natural born. They claim that other citizens acquiring citizenship by the circumstances of their birth are a subset of naturalized citizen.
But, all such arguments must be based on suppositions, presumptions and hypotheses that are extraneous to the Constitution itself, for as I have exhaustively shown, the Constitution itself creates no such category of citizen.
I also submit that unless the Constitution is inherently impossible of interpretation or understanding based on its own terms, such extraneous references must not be permitted, or may sometimes be permitted with little weight as set against the Constitution’s own clear provisions.
I submit that all the fevered and tortured bending and twisting, and all the references to this and that while perhaps entertaining are essentially nothing more than a diversion.
The Constitution itself is clear. It establishes two classes of citizen; those that have become citizens through the process of naturalization, and those who are citizens by birth, that is the natural born citizens.
There is no third class of citizen.
No. I made a reference to prove a point. I do not need it to reach my conclusions.
Dicta. Ark made no binding determination concerning the meaning of natural born citizen. Neither of Ark’s parents were citizens. While dicta can be useful information concerning the reasoning behind a decision, dicta is not binding law. Courts cannot write law. The case has no bearing on the Cruz circumstance.
Peace,
SR
What point are you trying to make?
I know it’s dicta. It’s also the truth, as history shows.
“You may find it ridiculous. I find it a practical reality. To undo the current evolution of the political question doctrine, you would need to force the issue, perhaps an Article 5 amendment. But Cruz has virtually no chance of being disqualified under the present process. And he shouldn’t be. He’s not the foreign threat the framers of the Constitution were concerned about. No one born and raised American was the target of the NBC clause. That’s what is truly ridiculous.”
There is nothing ridiculous about it whatsoever. It is a deadly serious problem, which has already cost innumerable innocent lives unnecessarily.
president Chester Arthur was not even a U.S. citizen. His father was born in Northern Ireland. He emigrated to Canada. Chester Arthur’s mother was a natural born U.S. citizen living in Vermont and close to the Canadian border. She met William Arthur in Quebec, Canada and married him in Canada. upon her marriage to her husband, a British citizen, she lost her U.S. citizenship and also became a British citizen. They had a daughter, who was born a British-Canadian citizen. They moved to Vermont. Chester Arthur was born in Vermont with two British citizen parents. The U.S. law prevailing at the time of the birth of Chester Arthur did not grant U.S. citizenship to Chester Arthur, because the laws doing so were not legislated until long after his birth. Furthermore, even after such laws were passed, Chester Arthurs citizenship would have been a naturalization at birth, which is not the natural born citizenship required to qualify for President or Vice President.
Chester Arthur knew he was not a U.S. citizen and did not meet the qualifications as a natural born citizen, which is presumably why he destroyed his personal papers to cover up these facts. As a consequence of the Constitution’s eligibility clause being abrogated, Chester Arthur appointed a Supreme court Justice who deliberately wrote an erroneous majority decision for the Supreme Court which resulted in the Wong Kim Ark being used to allow the anchor babies responsible for so much of the illegal immigration problem being experienced today. If someone had taken the responsibility to bar Chester Arthur from the Office of the Vice President and the Office of the President, there are thousands of U.S. citizens who would not have been cruelly killed and murdered by illegal aliens in the present era.
No matter how anyone tries to twist and turn it, lawlessness begets lawlessness, whether it is a Democrat or a Republican doing the lawlessness for whatever reason. this lawlessness has to stop. It is destroying the Republic and threatening the Bill of Rights.
His citizenship was acquired at birth. It may or may not be recognized by statute, but statute did not create it.
And no, foreign born American children have not always required what we now think of as naturalization. The most obvious example is the 1790 Naturalization Act. Between 1790 and 1795, it was unquestionable that children born to an American mother, whose father met a minimal residency requirement, were natural born citizens. And this rule was approved by roughly the same group of men who penned the Constitution.
What people here do not seem to understand is that recognition of a status is not the same thing as creating a status. A natural born citizen might well be viewed as a citizen under both the rules of a statute and the natural circumstances of his birth.
The fact remains that Vattel’s rule has never been codified into American law. Perhaps someday it will be codified, by amendment or some other valid process that creates binding law. Until then, we are stuck with the four corners of the Constitution, and hopefully some insight based on original intent, which arguably had nothing to do with preventing American born babies from rising to be President, and everything to do with blocking then known threats of rich European monarchists from running for presidential office.
Peace,
SR
“So, according to you, in order to know who is and who is not a natural born citizen, you must know the mind of God.”
Of course not, that is just being silly. The criteria were very simple. When the constitution was written you had to have a father whose sole allegiance was to the United States of America and a mother who acquired U.S. citizenship at birth or by marriage to her U.S. citizen husband. You had to be born in the sole allegiance of the sovereign United States of America; which you could do by being born in a State or incorporated U.S. Territory, or by being born abroad in a diplomatic immunity that prevented birth in the local allegiance of the foreign sovereign. Under such circumstances the birth is natural born, because the birthright was governed by the natural fact there can only be one sovereign to whom allegiance was owed at birth. Vattel described it well. Under the principles of natural law and the Law of Nations, this type of birth was the foundation of the existence of the state, nation, and culture. It was the natural way in which a nation maintained its identity and existence. Because aliens and foreigners came from outside this natural setting, manmade laws had to be used to set forth the rules by which they could be accepted into this group of people who were born within the nation and its domain. This natural state was traditionally attributed to divine origins and divine right.
Lawlessness is personified in forcing the constitutional text to say things it doesn’t say. That is the heart of the progressive deconstruction of the Constitutional order, and those pushing the Vattel rule as if it were binding law are doing just that, twisting the Constitution.
As for trying to pin the misdeeds of illegal aliens on anchor babies, and anchor babies on Ark, that just drivel. Sorry. Nations all through history have had various rules of citizenship, jus soli versus jus sanginis etc. But those that become citizens by a legal means, even if we disapprove of that mechanism, they are not illegals.
Instead, it is the folks who come over here in complete disregard of any rule of law, and the two governments that allow it, and encourage the transfer of the worst elements by these illegal means, who are the problem. The rest of it is just a desperate blood libel designed to win an argument in the court of emotion and passion that has been lost in the court of reason. Doesn’t work on some of us. Sorry.
Peace,
SR
“Lawlessness is personified in forcing the constitutional text to say things it doesn’t say. That is the heart of the progressive deconstruction of the Constitutional order, and those pushing the Vattel rule as if it were binding law are doing just that, twisting the Constitution.”
That is just the usual baseless flat out lie. The usage in the Constitution is traceable back to the Naturalization Act of 1541, which is the first time English commoners were granted the right to naturalize the alien born children of an English father. You folks are just inventing lawless fairy tales.
Assume this is the year 1916, instead of 2016. Then explain to everyone how you are not going to be “twisting the Constitution” when you describe how you will justify Ted Cruz being a natural born citizen and eligible to be POTUS.
A lie requires an intention to deceive, and I assure you before God and our fellow readers I have no intention to deceive you or anyone else. You should retract your false charge.
But if you don’t, that’s your choice. The fact remains that rules of citizenship shift over time, in both their formal and informal expression. If the framers of the Constitution had wanted the American rule locked into the Vattellian formula, they could have done so. Instead, they supported a clear violation of the Vattelian rule in the 1790 Naturalization Act. That’s not on me. That’s on them. Do with it what you will, Vattell is not binding law, and no one here has demonstrated otherwise, hot rhetoric counting for nothing.
Peace,
SR
You only get to plead your case. That's it. If I think you are dishonest (and I do), then in my mind, you are dishonest.
It works exactly like the finding of NBC, all one has to do, is believe.
The is nothing to retract. You, and Valentine, are either dishonest, or ignorant of the law. Both of you have demonstrated that you are very well educated on the subject, so ignorance is out the window.
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A lie requires an intention to deceive, and I assure you before God and our fellow readers I have no intention to deceive you or anyone else. You should retract your false charge.
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Once again, you have made a false statement. See the definition of the word, lie, that was being used in this instance:
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Definition of lie 1 . . . b : an untrue or inaccurate statement that may or may not be believed true by the speaker
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lie
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Now let us look at a few examples of your “untrue or inaccurate” statement or statements.
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Lawlessness is personified in forcing the constitutional text to say things it doesn’t say. That is the heart of the progressive deconstruction of the Constitutional order, and those pushing the Vattel rule as if it were binding law are doing just that, twisting the Constitution.
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Looking at your above comments one of the most egregious examples of an untrue or inaccurate statement is where you say, “those pushing the Vattel rule as if it were binding law are doing just that, twisting the Constitution.”
Those who were “pushing” the “Vattel rule” regarding who is or is not a natural born citizen with respect to binding and/or non-binding law just so happens to be the Founding fathers (John Jay, George Wshington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, et al), law schools using Vattel as their textbook, and the Supreme Court of the United States in four different cases:
Venus, 12 U.S. 8 Cranch 253 253 (1814)
Shanks v. Dupont, 28 U.S. 3 Pet. 242 242 (1830)
Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1875)
United State v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898)
Now you may want to try and argue that the cases were or were not using that particular part of Vattel’s text in a binding court decision versus as mere court dicta, but that too will fail. Whether or not a past U.S. Supreme Court or Presidential Administration ever used “the Vattel rule as if it were binding law,” there is nothing to stop the Supreme Court of the United States from doing so in the future. Other parts of Vattel’s Law of Nations are still being used by the Supreme Court of the United States to make binding case law in its decisions: District of Columbia et al v. Heller (2008). It appears the burden of proof is well met to demonstrate your statement was “untrue or inaccurate”, and you were negligent in not taking notice from the many prior comments and widely available discussions of Vattel’s inclusion in these case law precedents.
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“The fact remains that rules of citizenship shift over time, in both their formal and informal expression.
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This is another false and misleading statement. It omits the fact that, relatively speaking, natural born citizenship does not “shift over time, in both their formal and informal expression.” Statutory citizenship and its naturalization laws shift over time, but not natural born citizenship since time immemorial.
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If the framers of the Constitution had wanted the American rule locked into the Vattellian formula, they could have done so.
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There is another “untrue” statement. The Congress and Constitution have no power to create natural law or natural born citizens by positive law or legislation. You fail to understand the meaning and usage of natural law, which is the basis for natural born citizenship.
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Instead, they supported a clear violation of the Vattelian rule in the 1790 Naturalization Act.
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That is an “untrue” and inexcusably false statement devoid of any truth. The Naturalization Act of 1790 did not apply what you are calling “the Vattelian rule”. It only set forth a law for the naturalization of children born abroad with U.S. citizen fathers.
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Do with it what you will, Vattell is not binding law, and no one here has demonstrated otherwise,
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That statement is “untrue” and false in every detail. There is no excuse for neglect of the evidence to the contrary. See the above Supreme Court cases for just a few examples.
§ 215. Children of citizens born in a foreign country.
It is asked whether the children born of citizens in a foreign country are citizens? The laws have decided this question in several countries, and their regulations must be followed.(59) By the law of nature alone, children follow the condition of their fathers, and enter into all their rights (§ 212); the place of birth produces no change in this particular, and cannot, of itself, furnish any reason for taking from a child what nature has given him; I say "of itself," for, civil or political laws may, for particular reasons, ordain otherwise. But I suppose that the father has not entirely quitted his country in order to settle elsewhere. If he has fixed his abode in a foreign country, he is become a member of another society, at least as a perpetual inhabitant; and his children will be members of it also.
Cruz's father claimed refugee status when he left Cuba with no intention to return, and resided in Canada for several years.Thus he had *quit his country*.
While his mother may (or may not) have quit her country, she was certainly gone long enough to loose any claim to residency.
Also notice Vattel does not refer to children born under such circumstances as *natural born citizens*...just citizens.
If your assertion was true, then every person born under circumstances similar to Cruz's before 1934 would have actually been a natural born citizen of the United States, even though the statutes explicitly barred them from mere citizenship.
Do we owe all of those people a big apology for depriving them of their "natural" rights to American citizenship?
I should have given my core question, namely, does “citizenship by birth” mean born in America? Where’s the proof of that? A lot hangs on the meaning of that term.
I believe this point has been made up-thread, but the flaw in your argument is that the Supreme Court has stated that persons born abroad to citizen parents who are citizens at birth by statute are naturalized citizens.
"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 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." U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649, 702, 703 (1898).
It's still true a person is either natural born or naturalized, but one can be a citizen at birth and still be legally considered to be naturalized if citizen is granted via a statute applying to children born abroad. And that child is considered to be naturalized notwithstanding not having gone through some administrative process of naturalization.
See post #219.
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