ARTICLE II REQUIREMENTS NOT ADDRESSED BY EITHER POLITICAL PARTY
by Don Fredrick, blogging at The Obama Timeline, ©2012
Editor's Note: Re-posted with permission of The Post & Email.
(Mar. 14, 2012) — What the heck is wrong with both the Democrat and the Republican parties? In a nation of more than 300 million people, can neither one find natural born citizens to run for president?
1. Obama is not a natural born citizen because he did not have two U.S. citizen parents on the date of his birth. He was born with divided loyalties because his father was a citizen of the United Kingdom. (In 1961, Kenya had not yet gained its independence from Great Britain.)
2. John McCain was born in Panama to two U.S. citizen parents. (His father was a naval officer stationed in Panama.) There is a question as to whether McCain was born at the Coco Solo Naval Air Station (and therefore on U.S. property) or in the hospital in the city of Colon. If the latter is true, a case can be made that McCain is not a natural born citizen—although he is certainly a U.S. citizen.
3. Although Mitt Romney was born in Michigan, his father George was born in Mexico. There is some question as to whether George’s Mormon missionary parents became Mexican citizens. (The assumption is that they did, because they owned property in Mexico.) If George Romney became a naturalized U.S. citizen before Mitt’s birth, then Mitt Romney is a natural born citizen. (But George Romney was not a natural born citizen if his parents were Mexican citizens. George would only have been a naturalized U.S. citizen. He was eligible to serve as Governor of Michigan, but not as president.)
4. Marco Rubio was born in Florida to two Cuban citizen parents. He is therefore not a natural born citizen.
5. Bobby Jindal was born in the United States to two Indian citizen parents. He is therefore not a natural born citizen.
6. Rick Santorum’s father, Aldo Santorum, was born in Italy and subsequently emigrated to the United States. Candidate Santorum has not released any evidence showing when, if ever, his father became a naturalized U.S. citizen. A Freedom of Information Act request produced a response from the National Archives and Records Administration stating that it was unable to find any naturalization records for Aldo Santorum. If they exist, they exist elsewhere. (It may be that Rick Santorum’s father, although he entered the United States legally, never became a naturalized U.S. citizen—or he did not do so until after his son Rick’s birth. If that is the case, then Rick Santorum is, like Obama, ineligible to serve as president because he is not a natural born citizen.)
7. Chester A. Arthur was the first illegal president. (Obama is the second.) Arthur hid the fact that his father did not become a U.S. citizen until years after Chester’s birth.
If “natural born citizen” means nothing more than “born on U.S. soil,” then why did Chester Arthur go to great lengths—even burning records—to hide his father’s past? Why does Santorum get testy about his father’s background and refuse to provide Aldo Santorum’s naturalization papers? Why has Obama spent millions trying to keep eligibility lawsuits from reaching the Supreme Court?
Obama wanted McCain to be his opponent in 2008 partly because his past was, like his own, questionable. Obama wants Romney to be his opponent for the same reason. (If Obama continues to be questioned about the fact that his [purported] father was born in Africa, Obama’s supporters can respond, “Who cares? After all, Romney’s father was born in Mexico!”) If Santorum becomes the GOP candidate, Obama can, if necessary, have his lackeys question Aldo Santorum’s background.
George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and several more of the nation’s first presidents were not natural born citizens. They were only “generic” U.S. citizens. They could not be natural born citizens because they were not born to two U.S. citizen parents. (They were born to British parents.) But Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution allows an exception for individuals who were not natural born citizens—provided they were citizens at the time of the nation’s founding. Obama was certainly not a citizen in 1789, and the exception in the U.S. Constitution does not therefore apply to him. Nor does it apply to Chester A. Arthur, George Romney, John McCain, Rick Santorum, Marco Rubio, or Bobby Jindal.
Despite the complaints of Obama supporters to the contrary, race has nothing to do with the issue. Political affiliation has nothing to do with the issue. The issue is whether the U.S. Constitution is the law of the land and should be followed. The issue is whether this is a nation of laws—or a nation of men who believe they are above the law.
Note: Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 reads: “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.” [Emphasis added] The bold-faced text is the exception that allowed George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and others to be president even though they were not natural born citizens. They were U.S. citizens, to be sure, but they were not natural born citizens because they were not born to two U.S. citizen parents. (George Washington’s parents could not have been U.S. citizens when he was born in 1732 because, of course, there was no United States in 1732. Washington was born on U.S. soil—in the state of Virginia—but he was not a natural born citizen because his parents were, in 1732, British citizens.)
It is impossible to argue that the term “natural born citizen” means nothing more than having been born on U.S. soil because that interpretation contradicts the above text in the U.S. Constitution. Had the Founding Fathers meant nothing more than “born on U.S. soil” they would have written: “No Person except a born Citizen 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.” In fact, earlier drafts of the document did require only that a president be a “born citizen”—someone born on U.S. soil, without regard to the citizenship of the parents. But John Jay wrote George Washington and asked whether presidents should be natural born citizens, in order to prohibit those born with divided loyalties from serving. Jay’s advice was followed. The term natural born citizen was inserted, and the “grandfather clause” text—the bold-faced text above—was added in order to allow for persons who were not natural born citizens, like George Washington, to serve as president. Without that exception, no one in 1789 would have been eligible to serve as president. (Since Obama declared his candidacy in 2007, his supporters have been actively searching the Internet to modify or remove items that support the argument that he is not a natural born citizen. They have even gone so far as to remove references to Minor v. Happersett from the text of Supreme Court cases posted at the legal database Justia.com. When attorney Leo Donofrio identified those “scrubbings,” the text was replaced. Despite clear historical evidence that the citizenship of the parents is critical to the issue of whether an individual is a natural born citizen, the Internet is now awash with statements to the contrary. But, at least so far, the “Obots” have not dared to change the text of Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution.)
Every US citizen who was born on US soil is a Natural Born US citizen. Only naturalized citizens, who of course were not born on US soil, are citizens but not Natural Born citizens. The meaning of Natural Borm comes from the common law, and refers to the place of birth. Not the parents, the place of birth.
ReplyDeleteHere is an example of how Natural Born Citizen was used in the USA in 1803, shortly after the Constitution went into effect:
“Prior to the adoption of the constitution, the people inhabiting the different states might be divided into two classes: natural born citizens, or those born within the state, and aliens, or such as were born out of it. The first, by their birth-right, became entitled to all the privileges of citizens; the second, were entitled to none, but such as were held out and given by the laws of the respective states prior to their emigration. …St. George Tucker, BLACKSTONE’S COMMENTARIES: WITH NOTES OF REFERENCE TO THE CONSTITUTION AND LAWS OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES AND THE COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA. (1803)
Notice that that refers only to the place of birth. Parents are not mentioned. Natural Born Citizens were “those born within a state.’
And here is how it was used in 1829:
“Therefore every person born within the United States, its territories or districts, whether the parents are citizens or aliens, is a natural born citizen in the sense of the Constitution, and entitled to all the rights and privileges appertaining to that capacity.”—William Rawle, A VIEW OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 2d ed. (1829)
There have been seven US presidents who had foreign parents including Obama.
ReplyDeleteThomas Jefferson
Andrew Jackson
James Buchanan
Chester A. Arthur
Woodrow Wilson
Herbert Hoover
Obama.
Of these two fell under the grandfather clause, Jefferson and Jackson.
As to the others, the ones who were not under the grandfather clause:
Birthers claim that James Buchanan’s father was naturalized before his birth. Unfortunately for them, THERE IS NO EVIDENCE OF IT. No evidence at all.
Birthers claim that Chester A. Arthur hid the fact that his father was not a US citizen. Unfortunately for them, THERE IS NO EVIDENCE OF IT. There is no evidence that Chester A. Arthur kept his father’s citizenship secret. So, it is likely that people knew about it when he was picked to run as Garfield’s vice president.
And Wilson’s and Hoover’s mothers were foreign citizens.
Birthers say that they had been naturalized before the births. Actually, they were only made US citizens due to laws that made women who married US men automatically US citizens. That is hardly the same thing as being naturalized, in which you have to give up your citizenship in the foreign country and swear an oath. Because Woodrow Wilson’s mother never formally gave up her British citizenship, Woodrow was, at birth, a dual citizen.
Turning back to Jackson. BOTH of his parents were not US citizens at the time that he was born. Neither of his parents were US citizens at the time that he was born.
Granted that he was under the grandfather clause. But rationally IF the citizenship of the parents really had an effect on a person’s loyalty Jackson would be the least loyal of presidents, far less loyal than those with two citizen parents and less loyal than those with one citizen parent. Yet Jackson–with two foreign parents–was the most fiercely loyal of them all.
So, there is the argument for biology, which is more rational than law. IF we have a large number of presidents with foreign parents, and there is no evidence that they were more disloyal than presidents with two citizen parents, then what is the evidence that presidents whose parents are not US citizens are more disloyal than presidents whose parents were US citizens. And, if there is no evidence to convince us–then what is the evidence that the writers of the US Constitution believed it either???
If we today do not believe that a US-born child of foreign parents will tend to be less loyal than the US-born child of US parents (and Jackson’s loyalty shows that the US-born children of foreigners can be highly loyal), why believe that the writers of the US Constitution believed it either?
If they had believed it, they would have said it. But they didn’t say it. All that they did was use the term Natural Born, which referred at the time to the place of birth, not to the parents.