Your analysis is spot on and correct IMHO. Thank you for your effort.
Yup.
Only the Presidency is closed to naturalized citizens.
The Founders presumed the equality of American citizens for all other elective offices.
If Cruz is a natural born citizen; he’s eligible to run for President.
If he is a naturalized citizen, he cannot become President.
Good post.
This is the original, and I believe, the only interpretation of what Natural born citizen means. It is an eligibility requirement for the U.S. Presidency.
Very nice work. Thanks.
There are only two kinds of citizens: natural born citizens and naturalized citizens, the latter being those made citizens by statute, not nature.
Mr. Cruz falls into the latter category, having been granted citizenship solely based on the provisions of the 1952 Immigration and NATURALIZATION Act.
For all other purposes than the qualifications for president, there is no real difference. A naturalized citizen has been made as if he were natural born, with all attendant privileges and immunities.
The laws and customs of the United States conform with this interpretation. The citizens of the United States are divided into two classes, Natural born and naturalized. All of those who received their citizenship by court or administrative act are naturalized citizens and must present documentation of that event.
Yes, either you are born with citizenship based on the conditions of your birth or naturalized. If you are a citizen and not naturalized you have to be “natural born”. There is no third option.
Cruz was born with citizenship based on the law at the time of his birth. That makes him a natural born citizen.
My 2 cents.
Do you know of any case decided by the SCOTUS on any language of the Constitution that takes the position that the intent of the Framers in using the phrase and placing it in the Constitution does not matter?
Yep... and if the framers had intended the president to be “NATIVE born”..... they were smart enough to say that.
Well, I think the issue here is what the Constitution means by “natural born citizen.”
The proper way to interpret the Constitution is reading the text as is but if there is a reasonable question about the original meaning of the text, then you look to original understanding and intent.
Certainly there are questions about the meaning of “natural born citizen.” As I see it the argument boils down to whether “natural born citizen” in the Constitution meant at least one parent is a U.S. citizen and the child is born 1) on U.S. soil OR 2) on either U.S. or foreign soil.
From what I can tell, it has been very difficult to find the original understanding and intent of “natural born” to mean he must be born on U.S. soil.
If you can’t get there by a good-faith effort to find original understanding and intent, then you have to look to history to see how it has been interpreted over time.
I guess what makes sense to me is the example of a child of a U.S ambassador to a foreign country who is born in that foreign county. I would think that child would be considered a “natural born citizen.”
Now define “naturalized.”
In a similar vein, it is ludicrous to say that a child is a natural born citizen just because its foreign national mother snuck in and dropped it here, but someone born of a US citizen mother in a foreign country is not.
A statement that's close to the truth, but not quite.
Some people are automatically naturalized and go through no *process*.....but it doesn't make them natural born. Cruz falls into this category. His citizenship was automatically derived from his mother's, but it is not equal TO it.
Since 1795 the term statutory natural born citizen has been a Constitutional oxymoron.
An interesting analysis. Thanks for posting.
Peace,
SR
You haven’t given us the definition of two terms:
1. citizenship by birth
2. circumstances of birth
It’s not obvious to me that the first term means literally born in America.
The 2nd term is not equivalent to the first and describes “birth”, not “citizenship”. What’s it’s pertinence to citizenship?
Obviously this debate is reignited by the Cruz candidacy so here’s how I like to look at things when its not clear from plain reading (in this case I think it is clear and you explained it well). If one is to allege that Cruz is not natural born, than what is he? Naturalized? But in order to be naturalized, one has to take affirmative steps to accept it. For example if a Canadian came here, he would have to ask for citizenship or in the case of a child have his parents apply for him. He has to forswear allegiances to other countries and take a loyalty oath to America, and be sworn in by a US official. How can one be neither naturalized nor natural born? It’s impossible. It has to be one or the other. So in this case “Natural born” means acquired at birth. It doesn’t matter what soil the birth occurred upon, if he is born a citizen he is ‘naturally born’.
Of course this doesn’t mean other things can’t also be true. For example many countries including the US will consider someone born in their country a citizen too. The USSC has ruled on this issue, saying that citizenship is a matter for each country to decide on their own. There is nothing the US nor even the person himself can do about it if that country chooses to record you as a citizen. If your parents are/were both stationed in a foreign land in a military or diplomatic assignment and you happened to be born outside the US borders, that country could claim you even if you have no desire to accept citizenship. This is important because of the question of the opposite: if they did not claim you and the US law was that you would have to be naturalized, then you would live without citizenship to any country. Not really possible, except in theory.
So if Cruz did not have to apply for citizenship, did not have to take an oath, his parents were American and recorded his birth to appropriate US government agency as being born from a US citizen as an America (e.g. he is ‘naturally born’), then he is a natural born citizen no matter where the birth happened to take place.
How can anyone argue with that?