Ted Cruz, facing suits on Canadian birth, lawyers up

http://www.mcclatchydc.com ^ | March 1, 2016 | MARIA RECIO

[NKP_Vet]

WASHINGTON Ted Cruz, tagged as "Canadian" by a needling Donald Trump since the GOP race tightened in January, rejects any idea of being ineligible to be U.S. president.

While Trump hasn't followed up on his threat to sue Calgary-born Cruz over what he says is the Texas senator not meeting the constitutional requirement of being a "natural-born citizen," plenty of other people have. Trump has warned that Democrats will disrupt the electoral process by suing if Cruz is the nominee.

And that's caused Cruz a bit of trouble. He has had to lawyer up to fight the more than half-dozen lawsuits around the country, some in federal court, some in state court. A Cook County, Ill., judge tossed one of the suits Tuesday, not over the citizenship issue but over a technicality of how the papers were served.

[Radix]

Cruz is a Canadian citizen of Cuban extraction and not at all a NBC of the United States.

I hope that your $$$$ donations to FR are enough to pay for your abundant use of the available bandwidth required by your incessant silly posts.

[jpsb]

You are not very bright are you? If one gets their citizenship from ones father than which was the case before the 1934 naturalization act than how can Cruz be a natural born citizen? Answer-he can’t, he is a naturalized citizen. Our constitution give Congress the ability to NATURALIZE citizens, so if legislation makes you a citizen you are a naturalized citizen not a natural born citizen. There is no law that make someone born here with two citizen parents a citizen, they are natural born citizens. This is not rocket science.

[BlackFemaleArmyColonel]

Thanks!

[Yosemitest]

WRONG !

The SUPREME COURT of the United States has ruled this issue before.

Arizona Court Declares Lawyers Mario Apuzzo and Leo Donofrio Totally Cracked on What Makes a Natural Born Citizen

Now IF the Court had given such a “definition,” it still would’ve merely been non-binding dicta, or side commentary —
as any such determination was clearly non-essential to the matter they were deciding.
Such reasoning might have been convincing to a later Court — or it might not have been.

But the fact is,
they simply didn’t create any such “definition” of “natural born citizen” —
in spite of Apuzzo’s (and Leo Donofrio’s) elaborate twisting of their words to try and make it sound as if they did.

And even if they had — which they didn’t — it would’ve been OVERTURNED 23 years later, in the definitive citizenship case of US v. Wong Kim Ark.
In that case, the Supreme Court told us quite clearly, in not one, but in two different ways, that Wong Kim Ark,
who was born on US soil of two NON-citizen Chinese parents, wasn’t thereby JUST “a citizen” —
he was ALSO “natural born.”

If he was “natural born,” and he was “a citizen,”
then it is inescapable that the Court found young Mr. Wong to be a natural born citizen.


The 6 Justices who agreed on the majority opinion (against only 2 dissenters) also discussed the implications of such status for Presidential eligibility.
So they in fact found
that Wong Kim Ark would be legally eligible to run for President upon meeting the other qualifications — reaching the age of 35, and 14 years’ residence.

Mr. Wong, who lived most of his life as a simple Chinese cook in Chinatown, never ran for President, of course.
And in the highly racial America of his day Wong almost certainly could not have been elected if he had tried.

But according to the United States Supreme Court, legally speaking,
Mr. Wong DID HAVE the legal qualification to eventually run for, and serve as, President of the United States —
if the People should have decided that he was the right person for the job.

There’s much deeper we could go into the issue, of course.
I haven’t found the time to refute Mr. Apuzzo’s bogus “two citizen parents” claims in the full, absolute detail that I would like to.
There is an awful lot of refutation here, here, and here,
though.

It would be nice to put ALL of the pieces together in one place.
However, for those who don’t mind a bit of digging, the references given above are a good start.

But never mind — a court in the State of Arizona the day before yesterday quite clearly and authoritatively refuted Mr. Apuzzo for me.
The court smacked down Apuzzo’s and Donofrio’s claims in no uncertain terms.

Judge Richard Gordon DISMISSED the ballot-challenge case of Allen v. Arizona Democratic Party.
And he did so “WITH PREJUDICE,” which means
“This case has been fully heard and judged on its merits
and we’re done with it —
don’t attempt to darken my door with this same accusation ever again.”

Note that again:
Apuzzo’s claim has been officially tried in a court of law, on its merits, and found to be totally cracked.
And the ruling struggled to stretch barely past two pages into three.
That is NOT a lot of discussion,
which indicates that this was not anything even REMOTELY resembling a “close call.”


The pertinent language in Judge Gordon’s ruling is as follows:

“Plaintiff claims that
President Obama cannot stand for reelection [in the State of Arizona] because he is not a ‘natural born citizen’ as required by the United States Constitution… Most importantly, Arizona courts are bound by United States Supreme Court precedent in construing the United States Constitution,
Arizona v. Jay J. Garfield Bldg. Co., 39 Ariz. 45, 54, 3 P.2d 983, 986 (1931),
and this precedent fully supports
that President Obama is a natural born citizen under the Constitution
and thus qualified to hold the office of President.
See United States v. Wong Kim Ark
, 169 U.S. 649, 702-03 (1898) (addressing U. S. Const. amend. XIV); Ankeny v. Governor of the State of Indiana,
916 N.E.2d 678, 684-88 (Ind. App. 2010) (addressing the precise issue).
Contrary to Plaintiff's assertion, Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1874), does not hold otherwise.“

The statement that "natural born means both parents " has been DENIED by the courts !

[xander]

After drilling through the bazillion birther threads here on FR, I believe your conclusion is shared by thousands of Americans. Ted ignoring this issue can do nothing but hurt his chances.

The NBC requirement is interpreted by most Americans to be the strictest standard of citizenship. They simply can not be wrong with the child born in the United States to two citizen parents interpretation. It won’t matter if a court sides with Ted, the voter’s interpretation is all that matters.

[Yosemitest]

WRONG.!
It must be hard to argue a FACT, when EVEN YOU KNOW that you're WRONG !
Read Comment #44, LOSER !

[jpsb]

How can one be a natural born citizen if one would not even be a citizen prior to 1934? Please answer the question without spamming the thread.

[higgmeister]

Try again, LOSER !

What I posted is in the contemporaneous Congressional Record of the 1st and 3rd United States Congresses.

How could you think anything regarding a recent Representative that placed a paper noting that in a recent Congressional record could change that.

[Yaelle]

Cruz is not naturalized. A naturalized citizen is one who was ineligible for citizenship and then goes through a process to become a citizen. Cruz could have become a citizen from birth by his mom filing for his BC. She didn’t. So while he was eligible from birth, he on paper had no documentation other than Canadian. Thus he entered the USA at 4 as a Canadian baby. He probably thought he was American his whole childhood, but he wasn’t until age 16 when his mother finally formalized it.

It’s almost an optics thing. It just feels weird to have a President who wasn’t even American until age 16.

[Dagnabitt]

After this first court case the score is:

Cruz: 1
Birther Fever Swamp: 0

Since there are additional cases pending, Cruz’s score will change. The other score of course will remain at zero.

[Vision Thing]

Hey Cruz: Get ooot!

(Pardon the Canadian accent)

:)

[Eisenhower Republican]

He was still technically a Canadian in 2014. It’s an issue, and the other side is going to have a field day with it if he makes it to the general election.

[Yosemitest]

WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT ? TED CRUZ WAS BORN A NATURAL BORN CITIZEN !

"An Un-Naturally Born Non-Controversy":

... The Constitution, federal law, and the historical understanding of the Framers, as well as prior British legal traditions and law, all support this view.
In a recent article in the Harvard Law Review, two former U.S. Solicitor Generals, Paul Clement (who served under President George W. Bush) and Neal Katyal (who served under President Barack Obama) stated:

All the sources routinely used to interpret the Constitution confirm that the phrase “natural born Citizen” has a specific meaning:
namely, someone who was a U.S. citizen at birth
with no need to go through a naturalization proceeding at some later time.
And Congress has made equally clear from the time of the framing of the Constitution to the current day that,
subject to certain residency requirements on the parents,
someone born to a U.S. citizen parent generally becomes a U.S. citizen without regard to whether the birth takes place in Canada, the Canal Zone, or the continental United States.

Thus, former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger would not be eligible to run for president
because the Austrian native had to go through the naturalization process to become a U.S. citizen.

Certainly the Framers of the Constitution held this view of “natural born” citizen.
They had a deep understanding of British common law and applied its precepts, particularly as explained in Blackstone’s Commentaries, throughout the Constitution.
The U.S. Supreme Court in Smith v. Alabama (1888) recognized that
“the interpretation of the Constitution of the United States is necessarily influenced by the fact that
its provisions are framed in the language of the English common law,
and are to be read in the light of its history.”

Senator Cruz meets all three qualifications in the Constitution to be the president of the United States
if the American people make that choice.

One of those precepts of British law was
that children born to British citizens anywhere in the world,
even outside the dominions of the British Empire,
were “natural born” citizens of the Empire
who owed their allegiance to the Crown.
This historical understanding is explained in great detail by the Supreme Court in a well-known 1898 case, U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark.

The First Congress, which included many of the Framers of the Constitution, codified this view of a natural born citizen.
A mere three years after the Constitution was drafted, they passed the Naturalization Act of 1790,
which specified that the children of U.S. citizens born
“out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born Citizens.”
The modern version of this Act is found at 8 U.S.C. §1401.
It contains a list of all individuals who are considered “nationals and citizens of the United States at birth.”
Paragraph (g) includes:

A person born outside the geographical limits of the United States and its outlying possessions of parents one of whom is an alien,
and the other a citizen of the United States who, prior to the birth of such person, was physically present in the United States or its outlying possessions
for a period or periods totaling not less than five years,
at least two of which were after attaining the age of fourteen years. 

Ted Cruz was born in Canada in 1970;
his mother, who was a U.S. citizen by birth from Delaware, was in her 30s at the time.
She met Cruz’s father, who was born in Cuba, as a student at Rice University.
These facts show that
Cruz’s family background clearly meets the standard set out in the federal statute for being a natural born citizen who did not have to go through any naturalization process to become a citizen.;
That was also the case for Senator Barry Goldwater, who was born in Arizona before it became a state,
and Governor George Romney, who was born in Mexico.

The bottom line is that Senator Cruz meets all three qualifications in the Constitution to be the president of the United States if the American people make that choice.
The same is true of my wife, who was born in Manila.
Her father, whose family had been in America since shortly after the Pilgrims got to Massachusetts,
was temporarily working abroad for an American company—just like Ted Cruz’s father.

My wife is not likely to run for president,
but there is no question that she—like Ted Cruz, Barry Goldwater, George Romney, and John McCain—is eligible to be president
and to swear an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”


Hans A. von Spakovsky is a a former commissioner on the Federal Election Commission and Justice Department lawyer. 
He is the coauthor of “Who’s Counting? How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk”(Encounter 2012)
and  “Obama’s Enforcer: Eric Holder’s Justice Department” (HarperCollins/Broadside 2014).

[stillfree?]

What a waste of bandwidth you are.

[Bubba Gump Shrimp]

and this isn’t just about Cruz. I see all sorts of people who could want him declared natural born because they will have their own agenda, and not directly relating to Cruz, but to other candidates down the road.

I see the possibility of foreign entities financially supporting Cruz and his claim in order to supplant their own Manchurian in the future.

This goes far beyond Cruz, and for such a “strict constitutionalist” he should see this, and I know he does, but he doesn’t care. This is all about HIM and those who have a pony in the show.

This is why I don’t trust lawyers. Cruz is no better than any of his ilk. At first I wanted to believe that he was, but he isn’t. He does not have the interest of the Constitution as his top priority, he has Ted Cruz as his top priority.

Many men have given their lives for this country and what it stands for, and folks aren’t even asking Ted to risk his life for his country like many in my Father’s generation and my generation did, but for the best interest of the future of this nation, he should put his presidential aspirations aside, and do the right thing, and uphold the intent of the constitution, not lawyer up and attempt to change the meaning through legal verbiage.

I think America is tired of lawyers telling us what the definition of “is” is. We know damn well what it is.

He may be a great man, but he’d be an even greater man if he put the Constitution above his own personal aspirations.

[Yosemitest]

You're "the WASTE" !

Where's your FACTS ?

Where's your LINKS ?

YOU DON'T HAVE ANY FACTS !

[erkelly]

Hillary did not “invent” the “birther” issue. The requirements for the office of President are in the constitution. She is right on this one, and she was cheated of the democratic nomination by that usurper (which as far as I am concerned is the only good thing about Obama, he kept Hillary from returning to the the White House.)

Up until Obama’s candidacy, it was always understood that the President to be born on American soil, have two citizen parents, be 35 years of age, and 14 years living in the US. Hillary had every right to except the law to be honored and it was not. We all have the same right to have the constitution honored, and had the constitution been followed, we would not have had to endure these horrendous Obama years!

[higgmeister]

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.

Here is the text of the 1790 Naturalization 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: 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.

Both Matthew Spalding and Jack Maskell, allegedly American history scholars, each conspicuously failed to address the fact that the 1795 Naturalization Act entirely repealed the 1790 Naturalization Act, and was a near-verbatim repeat of that Act, except entirely removing the reference to “natural born citizen”. The failure to address this conflict with their arguments strongly indicates an agenda in disregard of fact.

In 1795, James Madison himself actually expressed concern that some might erroneously infer, from the 1790 Act, that the foreign-born children of American parents actually “are” (not merely “considered as”) natural born citizens. McElwee indicates:

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.

(McElwee, Natural Born Citizen, 1967, Page 10)

I pity you Yosemitest, for not believing the words of James Madison, the author of the US Constitution. If this is ever judged by our Congress, they will refer back to the contemporaneous notes of the Third Congress. The fact that I know this, and multiple hundreds of thousands or possibly millions of voters know this, dooms the brash and malicious candidacy of Ted Cruz.

Hint: If they don't know it now, the Democrats will make sure everyone knows it by election day!

[stillfree?]

You seem deranged. But here’s a fun fact. My vote cancels yours. Now go back to blathering.

[jpsb]

Ted Cruz would not even be a citizen of the USA before 1934.

"Prior to May 24, 1934, U.S. citizen mothers were not permitted to transmit U.S. citizenship to their children born abroad. The Act of May 24, 1934 (the "1934 Statute") gave U.S. citizen mothers equality of status regarding their ability to transmit U.S. citizenship. However the provision was not applied retroactively. Therefore, children born before May 24, 1934 to a U.S. citizen mother and an alien father did not acquire U.S. citizenship."

http://www.americanlaw.com/citabrd.html