Thread: Neither Cruz nor Rubio are Natural Born citizens

I know I am sensitive to what is a natural born or native American. One of my ancestors had all of his rights and property taken away from him by the courts because his grandmother was American Indian. At one time in our history you could not vote, be on a jury or own property until you were diluted by 3 generations. In other words being part American Indian he was not considered a natural born US citizen.

Originally Posted by MontereySherry

Two Categories of Citizenships

There are two categories of citizenship:[1]

1. Natural born
2. Naturalized

.....
https://truthmonk.wordpress.com/2008...d-definitions/

This isn't accurate. Its what has been spouted by liberals looking to extend Citizenship to anyone connected to the US in any slight way.
From the 14th Amendment.
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, *and subject to the jurisdiction thereof*, are citizens of the United States"

This is the common argument against illegal aliens that as illegal aliens they are evading US jurisdiction as they came illegally. If it was just anyone born in the US or naturalized there would be no *subject to the jurisdiction thereof* part. As the SCOTUS has ruled every word and phrase must have an interpretative meaning and nothing is just extra. Further the Civil Rights Act of 1866 granted citizenship to all persons born in the US *not subject to a foreign power* as those who would be citizens by birth to other countries.

The point is establishing the definition of what *should* be the qualifiers for Citizenship. Now the Constitution refers to 3 terms, Citizen as we just defined above, Naturalized Citizen.... these are now understood. Now the 3rd is *Natural Born Citizen* which by adding the term *Natural Born* means that the requirements MUST be different then the requirement for simple citizenship, and more stringent.

So someone can be a Citizen by birth or a Naturalized Citizen which isn't that hard to figure out. But yet a *Natural Born* Citizen is completely different and as more stringent requirement to be able to be President must not be the same as a Simple Citizen. Now out of what is left to decide the difference between Citizen and Natural Born Citizen is being able to have any connection to a foreign entity. This leave the solid conclusion a Natural Born Citizen must be a citizen by birth without foreign ties (two US parents) and possibly on US soil.

Problem is the US Constitution didn't specify what a Natural Born Citizen is but the founders in other papers had a clear intent of that yet its not been allowed to be argued as those papers aren't signed into the US Constitution. Yet we still must give seperate meaning to what a Natural Born Citizen is.

I have no problem with the President having to be born in the U.S. to two U.S. parents. I just want them to once and for all rule on it. I am afraid if they don't we are going to end up with a President with both parents being illegal aliens.

I want Americans to rule on the issue with their votes. Born on US soil to 2 US citizens. Very simple.

Originally Posted by MontereySherry

I know I am sensitive to what is a natural born or native American. One of my ancestors had all of his rights and property taken away from him by the courts because his grandmother was American Indian. At one time in our history you could not vote, be on a jury or own property until you were diluted by 3 generations. In other words being part American Indian he was not considered a natural born US citizen.

I agree that there was a bias against Native Americans at one time. My Great Grandmother was Cherokee and there are a lot of family stories....

This is an interesting article that I came across.

Ted Cruz is NOT a Legal U.S. Citizen at all


THE DEBATE OVER CRUZ'S ELIGIBILITY FOR THE U.S. PRESIDENCY IS ABOUT TO END

February 7, 2016
JB Williams
Constitutional Issues,
Incrementalism,

Oh Canada?

By JB Williams:
The debate over whether or not Senator Ted Cruz is eligible for the U.S. Presidency is about to end. It has now been confirmed that Senator Ted Cruz is neither a “U.S. natural born Citizen” or a “legal U.S. citizen.”

According to all relative legal citizenship documentation available at present, Senator Ted Cruz was born Rafael Edward Cruz, a legal citizen of Canada on December 22, 1970 and maintained his legal Canadian citizenship from birth until May 14, 2014, 43 years later.

The Cruz Campaign for the U.S. Presidency has claimed that Senator Ted Cruz was a “citizen at birth” via his U.S. mother and a “dual citizen” of both Canada and the United States in 1970 and that by renouncing his Canadian citizenship in 2014, he would become eligible for the Oval Office.

There are several problems with this claim… which make the claim false

1. “citizen at birth” is a 14^th Amendment naturalization term based upon “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”

Senator Cruz was born in Canada, subject to the jurisdiction of Canada. Further, any U.S. citizen by virtue of the 14^th Amendment only, is a “citizen” and not a “natural born Citizen,” as you will see below.(Source is Cornell Law on the 14th)

1. “dual citizenship” was prohibited in Canada in December 1970. (Source is Canadian Law)

From May 22, 1868 until December 31, 1946, all residents of Canada were British subjects. There was no such thing as a Canadian citizen or Canadian citizenship until January 1, 1947.

From January 1, 1947 until February 15, 1977, Canadian law prohibited “dual citizenship.” Foreign parents giving birth to a child in Canada in 1970 were forced to choose between Canadian citizenship only, or citizenship in another country, and to declare that with Canadian officials at the time of birth. The parents of Ted Cruz chose and declared “Canadian citizenship” for Rafael declared “Canadian citizenship” for Rafael Edward Cruz.

1. United States laws make it possible to be a legal U.S. citizen by only the following means…

a) NATURAL BORN CITIZEN – “As the society cannot exist and perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights. The country of the fathers is therefore that of the children; and these become true citizens merely by their tacit consent.” (The Natural Law as understood by the Founders in Article II of the US Constitution

b) NATIVE BORN CITIZEN – All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. (The 14^th Amendment definition for “citizen”)

c) NATURALIZED CITIZEN – the legal act or process by which a non-citizen in a country may acquire citizenship or nationality of that country. It may be done by a statute, without any effort on the part of the individual (aka anchor baby), or it may involve an application and approval by legal authorities, (such as a Consular Report of Birth Abroad (CRBA) form filed with the US State Department at the time of birth). (This includes “anchor baby” or “citizen at birth” born here or abroad, under the 14^th) Source is U.S. State Department

1. “dual citizens” are prohibited from being “natural born Citizens” as it pertains to Article II requirements for the Oval Office.

As the stated purpose of the Article II “natural born Citizen” requirement for the Oval Office is to prevent anyone with foreign allegiance at birth from ever occupying the Oval Office, and all “dual citizens” at birth are born with “dual national allegiance” at birth. The mere condition of “dual citizen at birth” would be a direct violation of the known purpose and intent of the natural born Citizen requirement in Article II. Source is a letter from Founder John Jay in proposing the NBC requirement for the Oval Office.
Now, Senator Ted Cruz has repeatedly stated that he has never “naturalized” to the United States, which eliminated the possibility that Ted Cruz is a “naturalized” U.S. Citizen.

Senator Ted Cruz has also documented the fact that he was not a “native born citizen” of the United States, but rather a “native born citizen” of Canada on December 22, 1970, who maintained his legal Canadian citizenship until May 14, 2014.

The Harvard opinion letter written by two of Senator Cruz’s Harvard friends, Neal Katyal & Paul Clement, a mere “commentary” on the subject, relies upon the 14^th Amendment naturalized citizen at birth concept, despite the fact that Ted Cruz was not “born in or under the jurisdiction of the United States,” was never “naturalized” to the United States, and completely ignoring the fact that Canada prohibited “dual citizenship” in 1970, as well as the fact that “dual citizenship” alone would prevent him from “natural born U.S.” status.

All of this explains why Senator Ted Cruz has no legal U.S. citizenship documentation of any kind. He is not a “natural born” – “native born” or “naturalized” citizen of the United States. Because someone must be one of the three in order to be a legal citizen of the United States, Senator Ted Cruz cannot possibly be a “legal U.S. citizen” of any form.

Only days ago, a 17-year-old first time voter at a New Hampshire town hall meeting for Senator Ted Cruz asked a very reasonable question… “How and why, until recently, were you unaware that you were a Canadian citizen?”

As the young man explained, this is not an eligibility question, but a credibility question… which Senator Cruz refused to answer, preferring instead to regurgitate the talking points carefully crafted by his Harvard friends and eventually, shouting the young man down, after a Cruz fan in the audience shouted “better a Canadian than a Kenyan!” (VIDEO) Meanwhile, a growing number of Constitutional Law Professors agree, “Cruz is NOT eligible.”

Of course, Senator Marco Rubio is also “ineligible,” as a “native born citizen at birth” by virtue of 14^thAmendment “anchor baby” policies only.

In the end, the only possible way to consider Senator Ted Cruz eligible for the Oval Office is if every “undocumented resident alien” is eligible for the Oval Office, which I personally believe is the real agenda of both political parties, as they work to meld the USA into the global commune where there is no legal difference between “natural born Americans” and “undocumented aliens.”

The fact that so many Americans do not know or care to know the truth about the Constitutional “natural born Citizen” requirement for the Oval Office, demonstrates just how far down the road of “hope and change” for the destruction of the Constitutional Republic, the enemy within has already achieved.

Soon, “natural born Americans” will be in the American minority… and they will be ruled by foreigners who have no legal U.S. citizenship at all.

http://www.capitolhilloutsider.com/t...itizen-at-all/

Exactly.

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.

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

aved to Reading List

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

.

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.