« My second article on finds in the Clinton Presidential Library | Main | Florida and open carry »
New CRS opinion on "natural born citizen"
I know this is becoming an issue between Trump and Cruz, and wanted to call attention to recent Congressional Research Service memo. English law imposed some restrictions on persons who were not natural born subjects (they couldn't be appointed to the King's privy council, for instance) and so the subject was debated and defined for many centuries before the Framers drafted the provision. The memo concludes that persons born outside the US to parents who are citizens qualify as natural born citizens.
I can see that, but also an argument that the 14th Amendment defines as citizens those born within the U.S. and those naturalized into it, so that anyone not born here is naturalized (either individually or en masse by statute). On the other hand, might the 14th Amendment be seen as an addition that extended citizenship to everyone born here, so that it's not the exclusive definition of citizenship, but added on to the existing concept? I'd have to do more research than I am likely ever to have time to do before reaching a conclusion.
11 Comments | Leave a comment
my lovely wife was born overseas to an American father. You can look all you want and you'll never find "naturalization papers" or any other extra anything.
I can't believe Dems want to push this area after dealing with Barry Obama's NBC issues for the last seven-years.
Every discussion I have seen about NBC is garbage. First off, English born "SUBJECTS" ARE NOT CITIZENS. The English discussion on citizens in not applicable. The Framers did not invent natural born CITIZEN from whole cloth. The definition was well known to educated people of the time, any probably to all people. Why is it that no one seems to want to cite Vattel? Maybe because it proves them WRONG. As Tucker stated in his Tucker's Blackstone, we through out English common law and created our own. (See Vol I)
I went through Eliott's Debates, and through the Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution (26 out of the 30 volumes), Tucker's Blackstone, etc. There were no questions about NBC and the clause, Natural Born Citizen, was accepted Nem. Con. (with no comment/concern/opposition) BECAUSE Vattel (1757) had already defined the term and NO ONE who framed the Constitution and NO ONE who ratified it questioned the meaning. NBC means the offspring of TWO CITIZEN parents IN COUNTRY. Vattel goes on to explain about being onboard country flagged ships, at embassies, and in the military. Go read it at www.constitution.org
IF Congress or the President or the Courts can simply redefine the term natural born citizen, which part of the Constitution can they NOT define? Of course if the government that is created by the Constitution can decide what the Constitution means, then we have nothing. All the claims to the contrary are lies by folks stealing power.
The 14th determines totally who constitutes citizens. There is nothing in there granting Congress the authority to alter that definition.
The naturalization clause does not give Congress the power to define citizens nor does the naturalization clause grant the federal government to naturalize new citizens. The power merely makes Congress responsible for "AN UNIFORM RULE OF NATURALIZATION" which the STATES use to naturalize new citizens. Note that throughout most of the 19th century the STATES did the naturalization. It was not until late 19th, early 20th that the feds usurped this power.
In truth there were no "citizens of the United States" at the founding because the Framers did not create a new nation. You can verify this be reading Eliott's Debates to see where the Framers removed ALL references to nation and national in the Constitution over the summer of 1787 at the behest of Mr. Ellsworth. The US ARE a Union, not a singular nation (See the several references in the Constitution proving the plural, i.e. the 13th amendment).
So no neither Cruz nor Rubio or Jindal nor Haley nor Obama are natural born citizens as meant by the term in the Constitution. Natural born citizens are a special class taken out of the common citizens and reserved to these special citizens the privilege of being President.
As another example, what does "no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood,"? The people who framed and ratified the Constitution UNDERSTOOD these terms as do those wh take the time to study. People today are ignorant because these same people have failed to simply go back to the historical documents and research the answer. There is no mystery, just folks running their own agenda or folks getting angry that their ox is being gored.
BTW, my ex was born in Paris in 1952 to a military father and citizen mother (both born in Kansas). She was born in the French side of the hospital and had to be naturalized when they family returned home. Again I ask, which grant of power allows Congress to pass any law deciding who is a citizen. The only grant allows Congress to make a uniform "RULE" about naturalization, which the states follow when the states naturalize new citizens. Try checking into some family history and find the immigration/naturalization papers of your ancestors.
Read the 10th amendment. If it ain't granted, it is withheld.
One other point: If we take the English "natural born subject" as determining anything, we must also take the fact that the relationship flowed ONLY THROUGH the FATHER and not through the mother.
Add to this the probability that Cruz' mother had become a Canadian citizen, so as to register to vote and that proves her desire/intent to leave the US. See Vattel about this point.
Every U.S. citizen born outside the U.S. is not "naturalized." There are three classes of non-U.S.-born U.S. citizens: Naturalized, acquired, and derivative.
Naturalized citizens are naturalized after being lawful permanent residents for a specified period of time.
Acquired citizens are aliens who acquire citizenship when their parents are naturalized. They must be under a certain age. (The law, and therefore the age requirement, has changed several times.)
Derivative citizens derive their citizenship AT BIRTH through the U.S. citizen parents(s), IF AND ONLY IF the U.S. citizen parent meets certain residence requirements (the law, and therefor the residence requirements, have changed several times.)
Ted Cruz is a derivative U.S. citizen under U.S. law. The fact that he was a Canadian citizen under Canadian law, based on his place of birth, is irrelevant to his derivative U.S. citizenship.
See Title 8 of the U.S. Code.
Again, Title 8 of the US Code is bogus as is most of the US Code. Congress has no authority to define citizen or natural born citizen. As I stated earlier, the feds don't even have authority to naturalize citizens. States retained that power with the feds only making an uniform RULE (singular) of naturalization that the states followed. The States retained the power over immigration also. What folks think they know today is contrary to the entire system of government created by the States when the States wrote the Constitution and created a weak central government with extremely limited powers.
Congress doesn't get to decide who is an who isn't a citizen. One must realize the US ARE a Union and not a nation. The Union is akin to the U.N. Can one be a citizen of the U.N.?
Let's say we allow that Congress can define citizen and natural born citizen as they wish. How then would one react if Congress decided to redefine Arms in the 2nd Amendment as those appendages hanging from one's shoulders? There would be no difference and no argument could be made against the Congress defining every other term to suit themselves.
The Framers were much more intelligent and worldly than folks today and they created a special class of citizens from which a President could arise. The Framers did not consider everyone equally amenable to being President and equally concerned with preserving the Union.
Have it your way but quit gripping when Congress or the President or the Courts decide something is or isn't Constitutional. You set the bar and said defining the terms was allowed. You have no position from which to draw a line concerning each and every term in the Constitution. Enough.
The 14th amendment didn't happen in a vacuum, it was a direct response to Scott v Sanford, that pre-war case that said "black people couldn't possibly be citizens because look at this list of rights they would have as a result. Black people traveling around without permission at all times of the day and night, owning and carrying guns, having political opinions and sharing them in public. The horror."
Then we had the civil war, in which the people who held the above opinion lost. The 14th amendment was forced through by the victors and said, "those black guys you formerly owned are now citizens, they do have all those rights you referred to and the federal government can make laws that prevent states from infringing upon them."
I think people who extend the fourteenth amendment beyond this context or try to interpret away this context are not being faithful to the document. Substantive due process is bullshit. Not treating the entire bill of rights as binding upon the states is bullshit. Birthright citizenship is bullshit. It was meant to convert slaves into citizens, not facilitate anchor babies.
Mark,
They didn't deal with it, they ignored it.
There is no dispute that the authors of the Constitution sought to impose a more stringent standard on the citizenship requirement for presidential eligibility than that for congressional eligibility. They did so by modifying that citizenship requirement by the term natural born. That modifier demands that citizenship be derived from the parents. That meaning, at the time the Constitution was written, is derived from “The Law of Nations”. Subsequently, the devolution of citizenship from parents to child was defined by statute in the Naturalization Acts of 1790 and 1795. Your understanding that natural born citizen is defined in the 14th Amendment is to equate natural born citizen and native born citizen. That understanding defeats the stricture imposed by Article II, Section 1, defeats its purpose, and is unconstitutional.
The child of Canadian citizens born in the United States is a native born citizen of the United States and a natural born citizen of Canada.
The force, clarity, and brevity of the expression: No person except a natural born citizen, is such that it is impossible to imagine a more effective grammatical structure that would express the founders resolve to preclude a division of loyalties or hostility in the presidency.
The failure of the congress to adhere to the principles expounded in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution has resulted in an administration whose overt hostility is demonstrative of precisely that which the founders sought to prevent.
Members of Congress willful (and I use that term advisedly) misunderstanding of the 14th Amendment seeks to avoid the responsibility of correcting the present situation, but the Constitution remains as always, unrelenting in its demand for acquiescence.
The issue is not going to go away. We cannot deviate from truth in selected instances and demand adherence in others. As this is written, it must be admitted that there are two very promising and outstanding young republicans whose cause is being advanced but to whom this same disability applies.
By reason of Article II, Section 1, of the Constitution and that alone, Obama is ineligible to the office he occupies. All the other charges against him (probably valid) are icing on the cake. The House of Representatives, though forewarned, permitted this condition to evolve. It is their responsibility for resolution.
The one thing everyone is forgotten is that there is another part to Natural Born citizen.
Namely that a NBC must NEVER have had a sovereign other than the United States of America.
Otherwise you could have a person born in the US leave before he was a year old, be raised as a citizen of the other country and at age 18 come back to the USA and rightfully claim his USA citizenship and still be considered a NBC and eligible to run for President.
Natural Born Citizen IS MORE than just being born a US citizen!!!!