Thread: Neither Cruz nor Rubio are Natural Born citizens

Originally Posted by ReformUSA2012

Nice post NewMexican

One issue though is that no country that bans dual citizenship enforces it against their citizens. Instead they generally claim that they don't have citizenship to the other country but belong to this country sort of argument. The few countries that *sort* of do this have a easy process to take back your citizenship to that country with you tossing away your old citizenship which of course is never recognized by the other country.

We do really need the SCOTUS to rule on this or Congress to pass something official. We can't expect people to rule on it through their votes as it never actually says they aren't qualified due to NBC status along with to many uninformed who want to stay uninformed along with those wanting to sell our country out for their own pocketbooks.

We know Cruz won't take up the issue and neither would Rubio at least not in the interest of Americans. This is why we need Trump. I wouldn't be to surprised if while Trump may have shut up on the birther thing for now if he was President he just might right away go after Obama's full information behind closed doors then make it public.

I agree that we need SCOTUS to rule on this issue.

If someone here is a legal expert on the U.S. Constitution, please let your qualifications be known. If that's not the case, then until this is ruled upon by the U.S. Supreme Court, which is highly unlikely, Ted Cruz should be considered a natural born citizen. I say that because there is a strong consensus among the legal experts that say Ted Cruz is a natural born citizen. We can debate this until we're blue in the face but in the end who is actually the most credible on this issue? I would say it is the legal experts who have worked and trained in this field of study for years.

More scholars weigh in on whether Ted Cruz is a ‘natural born’ citizen

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By Jonathan H. Adler January 15

More constitutional law scholars are weighing in on the question of Ted Cruz’s eligibility to be elected president, and most seem to concur with the conclusion that, under the best reading of the phrase “natural born citizen,”Ted Cruz is eligible to be elected President of the United States.

On CNN.com, Yale law professor Akhil Reed Amar, arguably the nation’s most prominent liberal originalist scholar, argues that Cruz is a “natural born citizen,” while also stressing that this is a question for the political process, and not the courts. He writes:

From the founding to the present, Congress has enacted laws specifying that certain categories of foreign-born persons are citizens at birth. The earliest statute, passed in 1790, explicitly called certain foreign-born children of U.S. citizens “natural born citizens.” It did not say they should be treated “as if” they were “natural born citizens.” It said they were in law deemed and declared to be “natural born citizens.” Congressional laws have changed over the years, but this 1790 law makes clear that from the beginning, Congress by law has the power to define the outer boundaries of birth-citizenship by conferring citizenship at birth to various persons born outside the United States.And here is the key point: The statute on the books on the day Cruz was born made him a citizen on that day. . . .Note that the right question to ask is not: What were the natural-born statutory rules in 1788 or 1790? The right question is: What are the natural-born statutory rules on the day a given presidential candidate was born? These statutory rules have changed over the years, and Article II builds these future changes into its elegant language.

Amar’s colleague Jack Balkin believes the question could properly end up in court should state officials refuse to place Cruz on the ballot, but tentatively concludes Cruz is a “natural born citizen.” At Balkinization, he writes:

My own view– admittedly preliminary– is that “natural born citizen” is a legal term of art. It comes from English common law, but it is subject to common law evolution, and therefore it was not fixed for all time in 1788. The best reading of the Eligibility Clause is that “natural born citizen” refers to persons who automatically become citizens at the moment of their birth. But Congress has the power to change (prospectively) who becomes a citizen at birth. If so, then Congress can partially but not completely alter who is a natural born citizen for purposes of Article II.

Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein, not much of an originalist himself, finds it to be a close question, but also reaches the same bottom line.

Under a narrow interpretation, natural born means that you were born within the territorial boundaries of the United States. Under an alternative and broader interpretation, it means that you were a citizen at birth, and did not have to undergo a naturalization process.The text of the Constitution doesn’t exclude either interpretation. The word “natural” might be taken to require birth in the U.S.; in the 18th century, natural was often opposed to “provided by statute” — suggesting that to serve as president, you must have been born in the country, rather than being recognized as a citizen through an act of Congress. But a natural-born citizen might be someone who just is a citizen at the moment of birth, as Cruz plainly was (through the citizenship of his mother). . . .On the merits, I agree with Cruz: The Naturalization Act of 1790 counts in his favor, and because he was a U.S. citizen at birth under U.S. law, the better view is that he is natural born. But University of San Diego constitutional specialist Michael Ramsey, a former law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia, put it well: “It’s a mystery to me why anyone thinks it’s an easy question.”

The Cato Institute’s Ilya Shapiro also agrees Cruz is eligible, and made the case in 2013.
Another originalist, Andrew Hyman, also makes the case for a more expansive understanding of the phrase “natural born.”

Virtually no one disputes that Cruz is a “born citizen,” and the only issue here is what “natural” means. The English lexicographer Samuel Johnson wrote in 1756 that the word “natural” means “native,” and the word “native” in turn means either an “inhabitant” or an “offspring.” So a natural born citizen is someone who was born a citizen by virtue of being an inhabitant of the United States, or (like Cruz) by virtue of being an offspring, just as Coke and Blackstone said. I don’t know if Ted Cruz is the best candidate, but certainly he is a natural born citizen, in my opinion.

Hyman and Michael Ramsey have additional thoughts on the matter, with a focus on Laurence Tribe’s analysis.






Jonathan H. Adler teaches courses in constitutional, administrative, and environmental law at the Case Western University School of Law, where he is the inaugural Johan Verheij Memorial Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Business Law and Regulation

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/01/15/more-scholars-weigh-in-on-whether-ted-cruz-is-a-natural-born-citizen/

MW you are right. I know in trying to fact check it seems even legal experts all have different opinions. That is one reason this needs to be decided and clarified once and for all. I do think it is ironic that in American history the man decided nationality (citizenship) while the woman decided race.

Originally Posted by MontereySherry

MW you are right. I know in trying to fact check it seems even legal experts all have different opinions. That is one reason this needs to be decided and clarified once and for all. I do think it is ironic that in American history the man decided nationality (citizenship) while the woman decided race.

Yes, but after extensive online searching, it does appear a strong majority of the legal experts do say Ted Cruz is a natural born citizen.

Originally Posted by MontereySherry

. . . legal experts all have different opinions. . .

YES. You can find legal "EXPERTS" who support any position you want to take on this issue and they are just their OPINIONS, and prove nothing.

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

YES. You can find legal "EXPERTS" who support any position you want to take on this issue and they are just their OPINIONS, and prove nothing.

Actually it does prove something because they are the experts. However, like I said early, only the U.S. Supreme Court can resolve this issue. Will that happen? Probably not.

Great post at the start MW but I'm guessing you failed to read a few things on it. According to the First Congress which is linked as *earliest statute* we find a few things.

First off on Cruz

"That any alien, being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof...."



"And the children of such persons so naturalized, swelling withing the United States, being under age of twenty-one years at the time of naturalization, shall be considered as citizens of the United States."



"And the children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the Unites States, shall be considered as natural born citizens."

Now considering things we can ignore the *free white person* part. Lets focus on the 3rd part first to deal with Cruz. It says who can be Natural Born Citizens yet born outside the US. The qualifier is in the word *parents* and no apostrophe. This means parents is plural which means BOTH parents must be citizens at time of birth. Cruz's father was NOT a US citizen at the time of his birth who only naturalized in 2005. Further it suggests the father's status is also the most important one in passing citizenship at all in the words of
"That the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been a resident of the United States".

This would mean that Cruz surely was NOT a natural born citizen but may have not even been a US Citizen in the first place as his mother never did the necassary paperwork for him to be a naturalized citizen.

Now lets talk on the first bits a bit more.

"who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years"

This states the rules for naturalization which can be applied to the *jurisdiction* part of the 14th Amendment. It states residing within the limits (meaning on US soil) AND under the jurisdiction of the United States. This means being under the jurisdiction of the United States does NOT just mean on US soil but more then that as the SCOTUS has said repeatedly every word, letter, and symbol must have meaning. The only remaining meaning of jurisdiction would be law abiding or better understood there legally. The 14th Amendment didn't even mention soil but simply referred to legal status / law abiding status. This means any person outside the scope of their legal status does NOT qualify to get citizenship for their children born in the US.

It also clearly shows there is a normal Citizen, a Naturalized Citizen, and a Natural Born Citizen and as per the SCOTUS many times once again every word must have a meaning.

So is Cruz a natural born citizen? Nope. Is Rubio a NBC? Nope. Is Obama a Citizen even? Nope.

There should be NO more confusion on the issue. Cruz is NOT qualified. The problem is the liberal push trying to oust fathers having any meaning and as long as 1 parent is a citizen that child must be a natural born citizen. A liberal agenda but NOT the Constitutional truth.

Now you mentioned most legal scholars agree on this? Not so at all. They are heavily divided. Most straight forward non politically affiliated scholars say their is serious merit to the challenges, the Conservative scholars say clearly we have been tricked and they don't qualify. Its only the liberal ones which is all you really hear about saying its not an issue.

ReformUSA2012 wrote:

Now you mentioned most legal scholars agree on this? Not so at all. They are heavily divided. Most straight forward non politically affiliated scholars say their is serious merit to the challenges, the Conservative scholars say clearly we have been tricked and they don't qualify. Its only the liberal ones which is all you really hear about saying its not an issue.

Yes, actually they do and no they're aren't heavily divided on the subject.

I'm not going to go into all your comments because we've been through all of this repeatedly on this forum. However, I do think the following will respond to some of the things you're having an issue with.

Ted Cruz’s Presidential Eligibility

• By D'Angelo Gore
• Posted on March 24, 2015

Q: Is Sen. Ted Cruz, who was born in Canada, eligible to be the U.S. president?
A: Most likely. The legal consensus is that Cruz qualifies because he was born to a U.S. citizen living abroad, making him a U.S. citizen at birth.


FULL QUESTION

Is Ted Cruz eligible to run for president based on the fact he was born in Canada but his mother was American? Exactly what does the Constitution and our other laws say about this?

FULL ANSWER

Sen. Ted Cruz announced on March 23 that he will seek the Republican nomination to be president of the United States in 2016. But, as some readers were quick to point out, Cruz wasn’t born in the U.S. His birth certificate shows he was born in Calgary, Alberta, on Dec. 22, 1970.
The U.S. Constitution requires a president to be a “natural born Citizen.”

Article II, Section 1: 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.

That should disqualify him from being president, right? Not so fast.
Cruz, who came to the U.S. at age 4, is a citizen by birth because his mother was a U.S. citizen when he was born. For that reason, legal scholars argue that he can likely be president.
In 2013, Sarah Helene Duggin, a Catholic University law professor, wrote: “There is a strong argument that anyone who acquires United States citizenship at birth, whether by virtue of the 14th Amendment or by operation of federal statute, qualifies as natural born.”

The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service reached a similar conclusion in 2011.

CRS, Nov. 14, 2011: The weight of legal and historical authority indicates that the term “natural born” citizen would mean a person who is entitled to U.S. citizenship “by birth” or “at birth,” either by being born “in” the United States and under its jurisdiction, even those born to alien parents; by being born abroad to U.S. citizen-parents; or by being born in other situations meeting legal requirements for U.S. citizenship “at birth.” Such term, however, would not include a person who was not a U.S. citizen by birth or at birth, and who was thus born an “alien” required to go through the legal process of “naturalization” to become a U.S. citizen.

And this month, Neal Katyal and Paul Clement, two former U.S. solicitors general, writing for the Harvard Law Review, said that Cruz qualifies as a “natural born citizen.”

Katyal and Clement, March 11: 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.

Case closed? Cruz thinks so, as he told Fox News host Sean Hannity on March 23:

Cruz, March 23: The facts are clear. I was born in Calgary. My parents — as a legal matter, my mother is an American citizen by birth. And it’s been federal law for over two centuries that the child of an American citizen born abroad is a citizen by birth, a natural born citizen.

Indeed, the Naturalization Act of 1790, passed three years after the U.S. Constitution was written, said that “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.”

But as the CRS pointed out in its report, the 1790 law was superseded by the Naturalization Act of 1795, which changed the language from “natural born citizens” to just “citizens.”

So there is still some lingering uncertainty about Cruz’s eligibility. That’s because the Supreme Court hasn’t ruled on the meaning of “natural born citizen,” which the Constitution doesn’t define.
This is not the first time that a Republican presidential candidate faced such questions. As we have written before, John McCain, who was the Republican nominee in 2008, was born to U.S. citizens in the Panama Canal Zone, and Barry Goldwater, who was the party’s nominee in 1964, was born to U.S. citizens in Arizona before it was a state. George Romney, who was born to U.S. citizens in Mexico, ran for president in 1968, but did not win the nomination.

Even Duggin, who wrote in her 2013 article that “a scholarly consensus is emerging … that anyone who acquires citizenship at birth is natural born for purposes of Article II,” acknowledges that the issue may not be settled.

“In the absence of a definitive Supreme Court ruling — or a constitutional amendment — the parameters of the clause remain uncertain,” she wrote.


— D’Angelo Gore

http://www.factcheck.org/2015/03/ted...l-eligibility/

Originally Posted by ReformUSA2012

. . . Now you mentioned most legal scholars agree on this? Not so at all. They are heavily divided . . .

'Natural Born' Issue for Ted Cruz Is Not Settled and Not Going Away

Without poking a stick in a hornet's nest, that is not my intent, and I admit that I am not a fan of Obama by any means... ..... What was the dust up over Obama since his mother is without a doubt an American citizen? Regardless of what nationality his father is or where he was born? She could have had him in a rowboat in the middle of Antarctica and he would still be a natural born US citizen?