Posted on 02/15/2016 5:54:49 PM PST by mike70
've never started a thread (in 16 years), but I have a question for discussion.
Assume Ted Cruz is the Republican nominee. The Democrat candidate files lawsuits challenging Cruz's Natural Born Citizen status in two or more appellate districts. In one, the Court of Appeals rules that Cruz is a Natural Born Citizen and must appear on ballots. In another, the Court of Appeals rules that Cruz is not a Natural Born Citizen and cannot appear on ballots in that district.
Both cases are appealed to SCOTUS, but no replacement for Justice Scalia is nominated and confirmed. In both cases the Supreme Court splits 4-4. Would the matter revert to the decision of the Appeals Court so Cruz would be on the ballot in some states but not others.
To complicate the matter further, some states, California for example, span two appellate districts. If the decisions conflicted, Cruz would appear on some ballots in a state but not others.
What happens now?
“None of our Founding Fathers were born in the U.S.”
Technically, that’s true because the Constitution hadn’t created the term “Unites States” yet. But most of them were born in America, i.e., the 13 Colonies. Only nine of them weren’t born here.
Go Manhattan Garbagemouth!
We recently found the WWI draft registration forms for our two grandfathers, filed in 1918.
Born in South Dakota (1881) and Minnesota (1896), they said respectively “native born” and “natural born.”
The term “native born” was an option pre-printed on the form to be checked, and the latter, “natural born” was written in the blank on the other, slightly different form.
In previous decades, when the various census efforts were completed, the forms called for identification of citizenship, origin etc.
I believe a young Cruz, upon admission to the US, would have been classified as Canadian, in those days.
Insofar as we have not had a single President born outside the US, I doubt our founders expected such an individual would merely appear, and declare himself eligible as Cruz has done.
Cruz’ finances have been just fine. Cruz borrowed against his own assets because he thought they would appreciate at a faster rate than the interest rate he was charged. Cruz’ loans were 100% secured.
How many of Trump’s loans have been secured 100%. None of them. In fact, almost all of Trump’s loans were so leveraged, so risky, and Trump so unreliable, his interest rates were extremely high. And, Trump has a history of his businesses defaulting on loans.
Why was the elder Rafael Cruz granted asylum by The United States and then become a citizen of Canada? Anyone else would have shown some gratitude to a country that saved his life.
The most reasonable answer is that, as a former Communist Revolutionary that supported young Doctor Fidel Castro, he still despised the evil Capitalist America.
If, If, If, If, If and then, then, then monkees fly out of my butt......
Here is where you are wrong.
NEW EVIDENCE: Intent of 1790 Naturalization ActSYNOPSIS:
1) In 1969 Pinckney McElwee uncovered evidence in the House Committee notes from 1795 which indicate that the reason the reference to natural born citizen (NBC), included in the 1790 Naturalization Act, but entirely removed from the 1795 Naturalization Act, was that people would wrongly infer that that Act was actually intending that those born overseas outside the country were to become natural born citizens. Clearly Madison was not wanting to make natural born citizens of the children born overseas to American parents. On June 14, 1967, Representative John Dowdy introduced McElwee’s unpublished article, “Natural Born Citizen” (pg 10), on the House floor, to the U.S. House of Representatives. Until recently, the import of this evidence has been largely unrecognized.
Largely unrecognized until now when it is precisely relevant to this political season.
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: Provided, That the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States
1795 Naturalization Act text change:
, and the children of citizens of the United States born out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States, shall be considered as citizens of the United States. Provided, that the right of citizenship shall not descend on persons whose fathers have never been resident of the United States.
James Madison had written "shall be considered as natural born citizens" He did not say, shall be as natural born citizens. In the revised act that abolished the first he corrected his own text to make it less susceptible to misinterpretation.
You may want to bookmark this and add it to your list in some way or even make a new thread if it has not already been done.
“NEW EVIDENCE: Intent of 1790 Naturalization Act””
Maybe this should go in breaking news...
not.
“In 1969 Pinckney McElwee uncovered evidence in the House Committee notes from 1795”
And where is this evidence? All I saw was writings dated 1969.
“1795 Naturalization Act text change”
Here is the full text of both:
http://www.indiana.edu/~kdhist/H105-documents-web/week08/naturalization1790.html
A lot of differences. Not just a removal of the “natural born” provision.
What was the real reason for the change?
One reason was that Great Britain was asserting claims of sovereignty over the children of former British subjects. This ultimately led to the war of 1812. However, the 1795 act prevented the possibility of foreign subjects (such as those of Great Britain) from qualifying as president. While we could not change British law to prevent them from making such claims, we could prevent them from exercising control over our government by creating greater restrictions on the citizenship of those born abroad.
As for the weird figure of speech / misunderstanding theory proposed, it is simply nonsense. The same phrase is used in the same act to describe naturalized citizens as well. Are we supposed to be believe the intent was to specify those who were not really naturalized but merely “considered as” naturalized?
Come on now.
"A naturalized citizen is indeed made a citizen under an Act of Congress, but the Act does not proceed to give, to regulate, or to prescribe his capacities. He becomes a member of the society, possessing all the rights of a native citizen, and standing, in the view of the Constitution, on the footing of a native. The Constitution does not authorize Congress to enlarge or abridge those rights. The simple power of the national legislature, is to prescribe a uniform rule of naturalization, and the exercise of this power exhausts it, so far as regards the individual. The Constitution then takes him up, and, among other rights, extends to him the capacity of suing in the Courts of the United States, precisely under the same circumstance under which a native might sue. He is distinguishable in nothing from a native citizen, except so far as the Constitution makes the distinction. The law makes none."
Thus the Act of March 26, 1790 would be unconstitutional if it attempted to enlarge the rights of a naturalized citizen to be equal to those of natural-born citizens under the Constitution.
Although it is not within the power of Congress to change or amend the Constitution by means of definitions of languages used in the Constitution so as to mean something different than intended by the framers (amendments being governed by Article V) an argument might be advanced to the effect that the use of identical language by Congress substantially contemporaneously might be 10 considered in later years by a court to reflect the same meaning of the same words by the framers of the Constitution; and under this argument to attach importance to the Act of Congress of March 26, 1790 (1 Stat 103).
This argument fades away when it is found that this act used the term "natural born" through inadvertence which resulted from the use of the English Naturalization Act (13 Geo. III, Cap 21 (1773) as a pattern when it was deemed necessary (as stated by Van Dyne) to enact a similar law in the United States to extend citizenship to foreign-born children of American parents. In the discussion on the floor of the House of Representatives in respect to the proposed naturalization bill of a committee composed of Thomas Hartley of Pennsylvania, Thomas Tudor Tucker of South Carolina and Andrew Moore of Virginia, Mr. Edamus Burke of South Carolina stated, "The case of the children of American parents born abroad ought to be provided for, as was done in the case of English parents in the 12th year of William III." (See pp 1121, Vol 1 (Feb. 4, 1790) of Annals of Congress.) The proposed bill was then recommitted to the Committee of Hartley, Tucker and Moore, and a new bill containing the provision in respect to foreign-born children of American parentage was included, using the Anglican phrase "shall be considered as natural born citizens." Manifestly, Mr. Burke had given the wrong reference to the Act of Parliament of the 12th year of William III which was an inheritance law. But, it was a naturalization bill and the reference to the English acts shows the origin of the inadvertent error in using the term natural-born citizen instead of plain "citizen" came from copying the English Naturalization Act.
Mr. James Madison, who had been a member of the Constitutional Convention and had participated in the drafting of the terms of eligibility for the President, was a member of the Committee of the House, together with Samuel Dexter of Massachusetts and Thomas A. Carnes of Georgia when the matter of the uniform naturalization act was considered in 1795. Here the false inference which such language might suggest with regard to the President was noted, and the Committee sponsored a new naturalization bill which deleted the term "natural-born" from the Act of 1795. (1 Stat 414) The same error was never repeated in any subsequent naturalization act.
The Act of 1795 provides:
"The children of citizens born outside of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States, shall be considered as citizens of the United States."
http://history.house.gov/Records-and-Research/Finding-Aids/4th_congress_finding_aid/
“In Osborn v. Bank, 22 US (9 Wheat) 738, l.c. 827, Chief Justice Marshall said:”
You are quoting from a judge in 1967. I’m just not buying it.
Where are the letters, discussions, laws, treaties, newspaper articles, or any other written proof, among the millions we have, demonstrating that the founders made a mistake or some other type of blunder in the 1790 law? Just simply asserting so in order to make it fit does not work.
I have read a lot of documents from the era of the founders, and none of them support this theory. I am open to change my mind, but I need better proof. I can read the 1790 act. I can read the one in 1795. I can read letters the founders wrote to each other. Yet I find nothing that supports these ideas.
There is a significan difference between good manners and election law. Your post seems to confuse the two. What possible legal basis is there for ruling that Trump is ineligible — because he has said harsh things about other candidates?
There is no legal basis for excluding Cruz.
Trump is not a republican.
RNC could rule he is scamming the nomination
That is reasonable
Trump hates conservatives
Why should RNC allow him as a nominee. If Bernie said he was a republican should we accept that ?
I am having trouble believing you are real. You must remember your American History class where the teacher told you about the most famous Supreme Court Justice of all time?
Chief Justice John Marshall
Born: September 24, 1755, Germantown, Virginia
Died: July 6, 1835, Philadelphia
He became the pattern for all Justices since. In addition to that, the change to the Naturalization Act was made by James Madison, author of the US Constitution, to correct the wording for the purpose of assuring that it would not be misconstrued in exactly the way you are misconstruing it.
Now, you have seen what the founders wrote at the time in the Congressional Record.
Please stop your foolish assertions and admit the truth.
Someone in 1967 wrote a paper about it. That is the link I saw.
I must have missed the link to the actual, original document you are saying I ignored.
Did you post the link?
Please post it or re-post it. I will read it.
I went back to look at your links. I do see what you posted now.
I misunderstood that your Marshall reference was not part of the 1969 research paper you linked to earlier.
But looking at the quote from Marshall, I do not see any of the points the 1969 research paper supposedly referenced.
Are these in the PDF files you linked to? Because I have not read those yet.
Your first post to me was supposed to be about some new discovery about the meaning and intent of the 1790 law. You referenced a 1969 research paper that did not appear to contain any arguments from the actual founders. Now you threw in a quote from Marshall. I am not sure if that is supposed to be part of this brand new information that was buried but is now uncovered.
The quote you attributed to Marshall does NOT make your case, and I assumed it was a minor part of the research paper you were putting forward in your first post, so I did not even bother to look it up.
So please clarify what the point of the Marshall quote is supposed to support.
Yes they are there in the .pdf files. The last two are the indices to the archived files in Washington.
Your emotional feelings about what should or could happen are not the same thing as rational, established election law. Stop grasping.
“Yes they are there in the .pdf files”
Okay. I went back and re-read your comments and the contents of your linked items.
I finally saw where you extracted the particular Marshall quote, and went through more carefully the arguments of the 1969 document.
The document is essentially an argument for why George Romney is not eligible to be president since he was born abroad.
While the document does contain a fairly thorough examination of the various arguments, it oversimplifies some of them, including mine which addresses the 1790 law.
The document essentially says the 1790 law was simultaneously a mistake (copying the wrong text of the wrong British law) AND a practically meaningless statement when it comes to the term “natural born citizen”. The paper claims both of these self-contradictory opinions at once. Reminds me of the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland who claimed, “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast”.
The document also uses flawed logic:
“The fact is, however, that the blood relationship had nothing whatsoever to do with the requirement, and the sole basis for the requirement was place of birth. This is demonstrated from the notes of Mr. James Madison, made on the spot, at the Constitutional Convention and reported in Bancroft’s History of the Constitution showing that the initial proposal of the Committee of Detail called for 21 years of inhabitance (permanent residence) which relates solely to place and is entirely unrelated to blood. But, objection was made that ‘no number of years could properly prepare a foreigner for that place, i.e., a life time of residence could not properly prepare one of foreign birth. (place again)’ It was then that the Committee of States changed the requirement to call for native birth, as ‘natural-born’ was meant by Blackstone, et al. (place again), but exception was made to those foreigners who were residents at the time of the adoption of the constitution—again place!”
Use your brain to follow the argument. The founders were trying to determine a reasonable requirement for residency. A natural born citizen could be such for his or her entire life but also spend half of his or her life living abroad. They were saying that a “foreigner”, no matter how long his or her residency here, would not be properly qualified. Foreigner, in this context can easily mean born here of foreign parents. It is precisely because PLACE was NOT the primary determination of natural born citizenship that the founders debated this. They said no amount of residency (i.e. PLACE, even including place of birth) could make a foreigner fit for office.
Which were they concerned about in the above instance, US citizens traveling abroad and birthing a child who could later become president, or was it foreigners who birthed children on US soil and could be qualified to be president? Allegiance has more to do with the citizenship AND loyalty of the parents.
Granted, there have been arguments made for more than a century against jus sanguinis as the legal basis for natural born citizenship. My position is that none of the founders objected to the use of the term in the first naturalization act because of their meaning and intent by the term. The idea being floated a generation or more later that it was a mistake or not truly natural born (just deemed such) is a convoluted trick to make the act fit within the predisposed paradigm of the arguer.
There is not one word uttered by a founder against the choice of words in the first act of naturalization. This act proves the founders believed 3 things:
1. natural born citizenship is an issue within the purview of Congress
2. natural born citizenship may be conferred upon children born abroad
3. natural born citizenship is based primarily on the citizenship of the parents rather than the place of birth
All of the arguments to the contrary are convoluted mental backflips to explain away what the founders themselves actually wrote. The actions of the British provide a clear reason why this law needed to be changed as there was a continuing threat by Great Britain to subvert this nation by asserting the rights of the king over US citizens. The founders did not want any natural born citizens to be “Manchurian candidates” by virtue of the control and influence of Great Britain which was a real threat, the proof of which is the war of 1812.
I will give you one point in this argument though. My arguments are based on the founders’ writings, including the Constitution, laws, and letters. It is based on original intent. There are some strong arguments based on court rulings (some mentioned in this paper) which potentially could influence a modern-day ruling on Cruz’s citizenship. So I will admit that the issue remains unresolved practically.
Would the founders, if they could be transported through time to this year, support a Cruz presidency? I doubt it. But not for the natural birth issue. The founders would be too busy preparing for Revolution 2 to bother trying to fix what ails our nation through the belabored and broken political process. The abuses of our current government FAR exceed those of Great Britain that caused the Revolution.
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