Ted Cruz: The law is clear that I’m a natural-born citizen

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Hot Air:

A follow-up to last night’s post about Trump dipping a toe back into Birtherism. According to 8 U.S.C. §1401, the class of people considered “nationals and citizens of the United States at birth” includes the following:

 

(g) 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

 

I can’t find a year-by-year timeline for Cruz’s mother but she was born and raised in Delaware and graduated from Rice University in Texas, which should take care of all of the temporal requirements listed above. I’m a little surprised that Cruz didn’t mention the statute in the clip below, choosing instead to reference John McCain, George Romney, and Barry Goldwater. They were each born outside the U.S. too, but if I’m not mistaken, each was born to parents both of whom were U.S. citizens. (McCain is also a natural-born citizen under rules granting that status to children of servicemen and servicewomen born abroad while their parent is serving.) Maybe Cruz thought citing political precedent would be easier for the casual viewer to remember than citing a statute.

Legal scholars Paul Clement and Neal Katyal wrote a short note for the Harvard Law Review last year on the meaning of the “natural-born” requirement. Their conclusion:

No doubt informed by this longstanding tradition, just three years after the drafting of the Constitution, the First Congress established that children born abroad to U.S. citizens were U.S. citizens at birth, and explicitly recognized that such children were “natural born Citizens.” The Naturalization Act of 1790 provided 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: Provided, That the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States . . . .” The actions and understandings of the First Congress are particularly persuasive because so many of the Framers of the Constitution were also members of the First Congress…

 

While the field of candidates for the next presidential election is still taking shape, at least one potential candidate, Senator Ted Cruz, was born in a Canadian hospital to a U.S. citizen mother. Despite the happenstance of a birth across the border, there is no question that Senator Cruz has been a citizen from birth and is thus a “natural born Citizen” within the meaning of the Constitution. Indeed, because his father had also been resident in the United States, Senator Cruz would have been a “natural born Citizen” even under the Naturalization Act of 1790.

 

 

If you want to insist that no one born outside the U.S. can be a “natural-born” citizen, okay, but that’s not in keeping with the original understanding per Katyal and Clement. If you want to insist that children born abroad can be “natural-born” citizens but only if both parents are citizens, okay, but I’m not sure where that conclusion is coming from. It’s obviously not coming from the statute quoted above.

 

And yet, Trump fans soldier on…

________

 

And yet another reason not to take Ann Coulter seriously.

[kevindavis]

Well I can't recall the last time I took her seriously.

[Draggingtree]

Is Donald Trump a Natural Born Citizen?

By: Jake (Diary) | January 7th, 2016 at 10:00 AM

 

In his desperate attempts to stave off Ted Cruz’s surge, Donald Trump has resorted to his old tricks of questioning his opponents’ citizenship. It’s what he built his aborted 2012 campaign for the Presidency on, and it’s what he’s doing now. Take for example his recent comments to the Washington Post:

What Trump seems to forget is that questions have been raised in the past about his own eligibility for the Presidency based on the Constitution’s “natural-born citizen” clause. Back in 2011, when he was making an attempt of sorts at running for the Presidency, many of the typical birther websites were confronting the question.

Why? His mother, Mary Anne Trump (nee MacLeod) was born in Scotland. Politico‘s Ben Smith did a great job summarizing and satirizing the issue:

 

Trump’s mother, it should be noted, was born in Scotland, which is not part of the United States. His plane is registered in the Bahamas, also a foreign country. This fact pattern — along with the wave of new questions surrounding what he claims is a birth certificate — raises serious doubts about his eligibility to serve as President of the United States.

http://www.redstate.com/2016/01/07/donald-trump-natural-born-citizen-lets-investigate/

[Draggingtree]

January 7, 2016

The Cruz natural born citizen fake controversy

By Thomas Lifson

I suppose it was inevitable that we’d have to go one more round on the natural born citizen subject before the Iowa caucus. Too many members of the mainstream media and Democrats (but I repeat myself) want to yuck it up. They just love throwing it in the face of people who questioned the many anomalies in the digital versions of Obama’s birth record. (For the record person to raise the issue of Obama’s birth was a Hillary supporter in Pennsylvania, back in the 2008 presidential nomination race.)

 

So it was the Washington Post that raised the question in an interview with Donald Trump, and he could not resist the bait. Most subsequent media discussions leave out that little fact. MSNBC in particular is having a field day of snark.

But for those in a hurry, just see point g of 8 U.S. Code § 1401:

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/01/the_cruz_natural_born_citizen_fake_controversy.html