Posted on 01/20/2016 8:03:53 PM PST by Jeff Chandler
Some folks, including Don Trump, think Senator Cruz is not entitled to run for president because he is not a "natural born" citizen. This matter was debated when John McCain ran for the office, yet it seems that the correct answers are still not generally appreciated. So...
...is Senator Ted Cruz qualified to be president? Yes, because the 1790 Immigration Act declares flatly that people in his circumstances are "natural-born" citizens. That law followed the adoption of the constitution by about two years, and some of the founding fathers of the nation were in the Congress at the time. One knows, therefore, exactly what the constitution means by "natural-born".
John McCain's case is extraordinary. He is not a "natural-born" citizen because he was naturalized by act of Congress [snip]
So McCain, who should and could have been legally declared "natural-born", was naturalized instead. Congress never subsequently addressed the clumsy situation, though it could have laid the issues to eternal rest with a federal law precisely defining "natural-born"--as the 1790 act did.
(Excerpt) Read more at newterrapingazette.com ...
Because they were lazy?
Because they assumed, that because it is 2016, Google exists (relieving Will88 and who knows who else of a trip to the Public Library)?
From the Act:
And the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond Sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born Citizens
An interesting fact is that the 1790 Naturalization Act is the only piece of US legislation (other than the Constitution) to use the term "natural born citizen".
“A law that was a law before it was law! Birfer reasoning never ceases to astonish!”
Disrespect is not going to earn you or your remarks any respect; neither will your errors.
“The significance of the 1790 law is that it demonstrates what the common understanding of the term NBC was at the time.”
That much is true, but unfortunately for you misbeliefs, not in the way you thought.
“Namely, that being a citizen due to being born abroad to Americans is to be natural born.”
Again that is a very false and very willfully ignorant statement. The naturalization Act of 1790 actually says the child is born as a naturalized citizen of the U.S. and very definitely not as a natural born citizen. Furthermore, for many decades the child born abroad with a U.S. citizen was ineligible to acquire U.S. citizenship by naturalization. No British national or U.S. citizen born abroad has ever been eligible to acquire natural born citizenship without diplomatic immunity to shield the child from allegiance at birth to the foreign sovereign. Children born abroad can acquire citizenship only by naturalization.
The author fails to mention that the 1790 law was repealed 5 years later. It is no longer law, and the argument that it tells us what the founders had in mind is contradicted by other sources at the time.
“And the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond Sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born Citizens”
The quotation demonstrates the children are naturalized citizens who are not natural born citizens.
“the argument that it tells us what the founders had in mind is contradicted by other sources at the time.”
The quotation demonstrates the children are naturalized citizens who are not natural born citizens.
Hint: if you rest your argument about natural born citizenship on a “Naturalization” statute, you’re barking up the wrong tree. Statutory citizenship and natural citizenship are by definition mutually exclusive.
Interesting take. I hadn’t quite looked at it that way, but I see your point.
“One must be born on USA soil or its military bases.”
Birth on U.S. military bases, embassies, and consulates does not constitute birth in a U.S. jurisdiction. This is described in the U.S. State Department Foreign Affairs manual in regard to the acquisition of U.S. citizenship by a child born abroad with a U.S. citizen parent. It also describes how such children are U.S. citizens naturalized at birth and are not natural born citizens.
I don't know about the debate, but he has definitely cited the 1790 Act in his defense.
And why does the Constitutional requirement to hold the office, used the words ‘natural born’ .... Why does it not say eligibility requirements under the 1790 act?
LOL! The Constitution came first. Then came the 1790 Act.
There is a difference in natural born and naturalized citizen... Both parents must be US citizens to ‘birth’ a natural born citizen. Cruz’s father was not an US citizen when Cruz was born in Canada...
The difference turns on whether or not a person is a citizen by birth. Ted Cruz is a citizen by birth. Henry Kissinger is a perfectly fine American, but not a citizen by birth. Ted is qualified. Henry is not. As is obvious to all who do not have an axe to grind!
Whatever.
The Congress of 1790 decided they should be considered as natural born citizens. The Congress of 1790 included Founders. Therefore, the 1790 Act is excellent evidence of what the NBC term meant to the Founders.
“Cruz was born in Canada and is a natural born citizen of Canada. So how can he be a NBC of two countries?”
Ted Cruz is not a natural born citizen of any nation.
Ted Cruz was a native born citizen of Canada. Canadian law does not confer Canadian citizenship on the child of two alien citizens, unless one or both of the alien citizens have been approved as official Permanent Residents of Canada, and such Canadian citizenship at birth is naturalized at birth Canadian citizenship.
Ted Cruz was born with eligibility to adopt naturalized Cuban citizenship, due to his father’s Cuban citizenship.
Ted Cruz was born with eligibility to adopt naturalized U.S. citizenship, due to his mother’s purported U.S. citizenship. Ted Cruz is a naturalized U.S. citizen by the authority of the Naturalization Act of 1952.
Ted Cruz is not a natural born citizen of any nation, because he was native born in Canada with alien parents, and was born abroad and could only acquire citizenship by naturalization for Cuban and U.S. citizenship. Naturalization precludes any possibility of being a natural born citizen. No child born abroad without diplomatic immunity can be a natural born citizen.
“The Congress of 1790 included Founders. Therefore, the 1790 Act is excellent evidence of what the NBC term meant to the Founders.”
Unfortunately, you simply clinging to a lie. The naturalization Act of 1790 says the exact opposite of what you are claiming it says. The quotation says the child is a naturalized citizen and not a natural born citizen.
I was born in Germany. My parents were both born to US citizens. My dad was in the military.. So I have been aware of that Constitutional ‘natural born’, requirement to be eligible to hold the office of president before Cruz was born in Canada.
Canada has its concept of NBC. And the US its. The two are independent.
It would be a violation of US sovereignty for the US to allow Canada's concept of NBC to have any influence over that of the US.
I mean, what if Foxy Lady were running, and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, becoming aware of an imminent US political hazard, suddenly made her a citizen of the Islamic State? Should al-Baghdadi's declaration have any legal bearing on Foxy Lady's eligibility?
So, you and Cruz are both eligible (assuming you are now over 35 and have resided state-side for at least 14 years). That is the requirement, and you meet it.
What's your beef?
I would have more credibility calling myself natural born, than he does. Least both of my parents were US citizens... But to think myself entitled to this birthright no. But my siblings and children sure are natural born and I love this nation and our Constitution enough I want it preserved...
I owe Cruz nothing, most especially a Constitutional exemption to hold the office of president. Natural born citizens who do not care about their birthright remind me of Esau. He sold his birthright for a bowl of red pottage...(lentils) then he lost his blessing. God did not like him much either.
So, you disdain Cruz. And you entertain a magical mythical anti-military notion of NBC!
That has nothing to do with Cruz's eligibility. Or yours.
As for me, I'm for Cruz for the time being.
But I will vote for the GOP nominee, whoever it proves to be. And I will disdain those who do otherwise!
My disdain is the subversion of the Constitution. No person should be exempt from the Constitutional requirements. Most especially Harvard law school grads.
“Some people are really dense!”
Unfortunately, you happen to be describing yourself, because you are stubbornly basing your opinion on a number of false assumptions.
“Naturalization has nothing to do with Cruz;”
Ted Cruz has said the opposite, because Ted Cruz claims to have acquired U.S. citizenship by reason of his mother being a U.S. citizen. Acquisition of U.S. citizenship by a child born abroad with one alien parent and one U.S. citizen parent is authorized only by the U.S. Naturalizaiton Act of 1952 for a person born in 1970. Furthermore, no person born abroad without diplomatic immunity has ever been recognized as a natural born nation or a natural born citizen in England, Great Britain, or the United States. Birth abroad has always required diplomatic immunity to shield the child from allegiance to the foreign sovereign in order to be a natural born citizen, otherwise such a child always required letters patent from the sovereign to become a denizen or an act of Parliament or a colonial assembly to naturalize as a subject or a citizen.
“he could not be naturalized, since he was already born a citizen.”
That is another false assumption. You assume the child born abroad is born as a natural born citizen. That is simply not possible, unless the child was shielded from local, temporary, and permanent allegiance at birth to the foreign sovereign by diplomatic immunity against that foreign sovereignty. Without a form of diplomatic immunity, the child is born within the jurisdiction and obligation of allegiance to a foreign sovereign, which in the case of a U.S. citizen father, results in a form of allegiance, obligation, and duty which is divided between the foreign sovereign and the sovereign United States. No person can be a natural born citizen of any place in the presence of divided obligations of allegiance and citizenship. In such cases of divided allegiance and divided citizenship obligations at birth, the only means of resolving the division of such obligations is by the application of statutory laws of naturalization which create the legal fiction of adopted citizenship renouncing and/or preferring the conflicting obligations of allegiance and citizenship.
When the naturalization is described as occurring at birth, what is actually taking place is the child begins at birth with being alienated from the father’s sovereign by being born in the presence of the sovereignty and protection of the foreign sovereign and usually acquiring an obligation of allegiance to that foreign sovereign. Subsequent to the alienation at birth, the child also acquires the right for a parent or a child to elect to adopt or not to adopt U.S. citizenship by the authority of a naturalization law, and the naturalization law creates the legal fiction the child was born with some and not all of the rights and obligations of an actual citizen retroactive to the moment of birth, which is called being naturalized at birth. By contrast, and actual natural born citizen is born with no other foreign obligation of allegiance or citizenship besides United States citizenship, whether or not the parent or child would voluntary choose to adopt the U.S. citizenship; they simply have no voluntary choice in the matter. This is why every person born abroad without diplomatic immunity and lawfully acquiring citizenship, with our without citizen parents, has done so by the authority of a naturalization act that creates the legal fiction the person enjoys rights and obligations similar to and not the same as an actual natural born citizen.
Note, it will not work to deny the existence of law that implements what I have described, because they are evidenced in the historical naturalization acts, the case law, the supreme court decisions, and the U.S. State Department Foreign Affairs Manual that administers that law. I’ve posted them all before, and if need be will post them again.
Bravo! That’s the American spirit.
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