Monday, August 19, 2013

Ted Cruz Releases Birth Certificate: Claims His Canadian Birth Certificate Proves He's A Natural Born Citizen


The natural born citizenship eligibility requirement for presidents was essentially read out of the U.S. Constitution during the 2008 presidential election when election authority after election authority and court after court across the land refused to consider what it means to be a natural born citizen in order to determine whether either of the candidates that year, Barack Obama or John McCain, were constitutionally eligible to serve as president. McCain produced his birth certificate at the outset of his campaign showing his birth in Panama to his two American citizen parents, as well as obtaining passage of a bipartisan, nonbinding Senate resolution declaring him eligible to serve. Obama, who claims an American citizen mother and a Kenyan father, never produced a genuine birth certificate during his campaign, and when he finally "found it" (i.e., the words of Obama's BFF Reggie Love) in April, 2011, most document experts who studied it concluded that it was a bad photo-shopped forgery.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who has been mentioned as a possible Republican presidential candidate in 2016, has faced a lot of scrutiny across the media spectrum over whether he's a natural born citizen. Cruz has produced his birth certificate, which definitively proves that he is not a natural born citizen because he was born in Calgary, Canada to a U.S. citizen mother and a Cuban father. Cruz was a natural born Canadian citizen at birth; however, he was only a U.S. citizen by virtue of a federal law that makes children born to U.S. citizen mothers living abroad a citizen at birth. A statutory citizen at birth is not the same as a natural born citizen--a term that I believe is limited to children born of U.S. citizens within the United States. The U.S. Supreme Court has never definitively decided the question of what constitutes a natural born citizen for purposes of presidential eligibility so nobody can say with certain how the high court would define interpret that term. Dozens of attempts to get that issue before the Court over lingering questions about Obama's eligibility were all unsuccessful, and lower federal court decisions dismissed the lawsuits on standing grounds without ruling on their merit. Here's how the Dallas Morning News treats the debate over Cruz' eligibility:
Born in Canada to an American mother, Ted Cruz became an instant U.S. citizen. But under Canadian law, he also became a citizen of that country the moment he was born.
Unless the Texas Republican senator formally renounces that citizenship, he will remain a citizen of both countries, legal experts say.
That means he could assert the right to vote in Canada or even run for Parliament. On a lunch break from the U.S. Senate, he could head to the nearby embassy — the one flying a bright red maple leaf flag — pull out his Calgary, Alberta, birth certificate and obtain a passport.
“He’s a Canadian,” said Toronto lawyer Stephen Green, past chairman of the Canadian Bar Association’s Citizenship and Immigration Section.
The circumstances of Cruz’s birth have fueled a simmering debate over his eligibility to run for president. Knowingly or not, dual citizenship is an apparent if inconvenient truth for the tea party firebrand, who shows every sign he’s angling for the White House.
“Senator Cruz became a U.S. citizen at birth, and he never had to go through a naturalization process after birth to become a U.S. citizen,” said spokeswoman Catherine Frazier. “To our knowledge, he never had Canadian citizenship, so there is nothing to renounce.”
The U.S. Constitution allows only a “natural born” American citizen to serve as president. Most legal scholars who have studied the question agree that includes an American born overseas to an American parent, such as Cruz.
The Constitution says nothing about would-be presidents born with dual citizenship.
Detractors have derided Cruz as “Canadian Ted,” saying he can’t run for president because he wasn’t born on U.S. soil.
Cruz, a Harvard-trained lawyer and former clerk for the U.S. chief justice, disagrees. He reasserted last week that being an American by birth makes him eligible.
Obama, like Cruz, was also a dual citizen at birth. His father's Kenyan citizenship, which at the time of his birth was a British commonwealth, made Obama a British citizen as well as a U.S. citizen. If he didn't claim British citizenship by the time he turned 18, he lost his citizenship in that country by operation of law. Obama also became a citizen of Indonesia after he was adopted by his step-father, Lolo Soetoro, and renamed Barry Soetoro. Some legal scholars argue that Obama's parents were required to renounce his U.S. citizenship at the time in order for him to acquire his Indonesian citizenship. Internet rumors have persisted that Obama attended high school, college and law school in the United States as a foreign student using a foreign passport. The U.S. government, other governments and the schools he attended have never released any records that would disprove that claim. School records uncovered in Indonesia showed that Obama's name and citizenship had been changed.

UPDATE: Ted Cruz has decided he will renounce his Canadian citizenship as if that will fix his constitutional ineligibility problem. Get a clue, Ted. You're not Barack Obama. The U.S. Constitution will apply to your candidacy. You can bet that Democrats will find a friendly federal judge or state election authority who will deem him ineligible, and the media will give that ruling their full blessing. My biggest problem with Cruz is that he's a graduate of Harvard Law School. The last thing this country needs is another Yale or Harvard graduate like our last four presidents, none of whom had any respect for protecting our constitutional rights, and all of whom are controlled by powerful and evil forces intent on destroying the country.

6 comments:

Covenant60 said...

You are wrong. A natural born citizen is one who is a US citizen at birth, and does not have to go through the naturalization process to become a US citizen. Thus, George Romney, McCain, Obama, and Cruz are natural born US citizens and are eligible to be President.

It's really not as complicated as you make it out to be.

Gary R. Welsh said...

You can't point to a single authoritative court decision to prove your point. The Supreme Court has only stated in dicta that it has never been disputed that a person born to U.S. citizen parents within the U.S. is a natural born citizen; the question of whether the term meant that children born within the U.S. of parents who weren't citizens were also natural born was open for debate. Children not born on American soil are not natural born citizens regardless of their parents' citizenship. McCain skirted around it by claiming that his parents were stationed on a military base in Panama at the time of his birth. Children born to U.S. citizens abroad only became citizens by operation of statutes later adopted by Congress. If they were natural born, there would have been no need for the statutes.

Paul K. Ogden said...

Originally I thought the "natural born" provision of the Constitution was as Bayer said. But the historical evidence I've seen suggests that the Framers did not simply mean "natural born" to mean a person who hadn't gone through the naturalization process. Speaking of which, did they even have the naturalization process back in 1789? I'm not sure they did. I think that came later.

Gary R. Welsh said...

The first Immigration & Nationality Act enacted by the first Congress actually added a definition for "natural born citizen" to include children born of U.S. diplomats while serving the country abroad. Implicit in that definition was the exclusion of all other children born of U.S. citizens abroad. Subsequent acts of Congress removed the definition, some argue because early members of Congress did not believe that constitutional terms should be defined by statute; rather, they should be interpreted by courts consistent with the framers' intent when the Constitution was drafted. The framers only referred to the term "natural born" citizens in reference to presidential eligibility. The framers also grandfathered in all persons who were U.S. citizens at the time of the enactment of the Constitution, again signaling to us the distinction between persons who are deemed citizens by statute or through the naturalization process as opposed to those who are natural born. If persons like Cruz were natural born, then Congress would have never been required to enact a statute making persons like him a citizen at birth.

Anonymous said...

Regarding: ". Obama also became a citizen of Indonesia after he was adopted by his step-father, Lolo Soetoro, and renamed Barry Soetoro."

Answer: Obama NEVER was a citizen of Indonesia as a simple telephone call to the Indonesian Embassy in Washington will confirm. Nor was he adopted by Soetoro, which requires the action of a district court in Indonesia (or for that matter in Hawaii) and no court papers have ever been shown.

Obama simply use the Indonesian name of his Indonesian step-father when he was in Indonesia as a convenience. Since he never legally changed his name, he did not have t change it back.

Regarding the meaning of Natural Born Citizen. NO US court, not even the Minor v. Happersett case that birthers are fond of, has EVER said that two citizen parents are required in order to be a NBC, and the US Supreme Court ruled six to two (one justice not voting) in the Wong Kim Ark decision that the meaning of NBC comes from the common law (hence NOT from Vattel) and that it includes every child born on US soil---with the exception of the children of foreign diplomats.

"Every child born in the United States is a natural-born United States citizen except for the children of diplomats.”---Senator Lindsay Graham (December 11, 2008 letter to constituents)

And there have now been EIGHT state court rulings on Obama alone, and one federal court ruling, and one more state court ruling on McCain. All TEN of them said that the meaning of Natural Born Citizen was defined by the US Supreme Court in the Wong Kim Ark case, and all ten said that the Wong Kim Ark case said that the meaning of Natural Born came from the common law (as Meese also said), and that it referred to the place of birth (as Meese, Hatch and Graham all say), and that every child born in the USA except for the children of foreign diplomats is a Natural Born US Citizen.

More reading on the subject:

http://www.fredthompsonsamerica.com/2012/07/31/is-rubio-eligible/

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2012/02/birtherism-2012

http://www.obamabirthbook.com/http:/www.obamabirthbook.com/2012/04/vattel-and-natural-born-citizen/


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural-born-citizen_clause_of_the_U.S._Constitution

http://tesibria.typepad.com/whats_your_evidence/scotus-natural-born-citizen-a-compendium.html

Gary R. Welsh said...

The only Indonesian records produced show that he is identified as an Indonesian citizen. I realize you don't like that fact, but the only excuse you have been able to provide when you've trolled this site previously was that his parents lied when they enrolled him in school since only Indonesian citizens were allowed at the time to enroll in the schools he attended there. It's never been proven that Barack Obama, Sr. is his paternal father. The INS records released on BO, Sr. prove that immigration officials did not believe he was the father of the child known as Barack Obama, Jr.. The father filed extensions of his student visa where he neglected to even mention having a son to Ann Dunham. There is no marriage record for them in Hawaii; the only thing that has been produced is a divorce record, which had no provision for child support. Because he had claimed to be married to Ann Dunham on prior filings, he was having trouble marrying his second American wife (third wife including the one back in Kenya) and taking her back to Kenya with him, which necessitated a legal document showing he was not married to Ann Dunham. The only masquerade was done to hide the identity of his true biological father, which was likely the man who molested his mother as a teenager, Frank Marshall Davis.

I'm not going to argue the NBC point any further. I've done a hell of lot more research on the subject than you have, and I have a much better legal understanding of what the term means than you. Furthermore, English common law is NOT used to interpret our U.S. Constitution. In case you forget, we fought the American Revolution to win our independence from the British monarchy. We sure as hell didn't incorporate the King's laws into our Constitution. Natural born citizens don't require a naturalization statute to make them citizens. Ted Cruz is a citizen by virtue of an act passed by Congress, which has no authority to make someone a natural born citizen simply by passing a law and making them such. The statute on its face only makes him a citizen, not an NBC.