This is possibly my all-time favorite Balloon-Juice comment, written after the discovery of Richard III’s bones:
Recent DNA tests prove that Richard Hussein Plantagenet was born in Kenya and therefore could not legally have been king of England.
Well, get ready, people, because Tea Party hunk-of-the-month Ted Cruz may run for president…DESPITE BEING BORN IN CANADA:
Cruzâs mother was a U.S. citizen when he was born, and current U.S. law extends citizenship to anyone born to a U.S. citizen, regardless of where the birth takes place. The question is whether citizenship is the same thing as being a ânatural-born citizen.â
[….]The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service has even weighed in on the issue, writing in November 2011 that people born to U.S. citizens in foreign countries âmost likelyâ qualify as natural-born citizens.
I know nothing about the legal issues here (everything I’ve read suggests that Cruz would be eligible just as Obama would have been eligible had he been born in Kenya), but I’ll be curious to see how many birthers decide they don’t care where Ted Cruz was born.
Bulworth
Well, Canada is virtually the U.S. whereas Hawaii is some foreign exotic land. //
JPL
Remember the good old days before Diaper David Vitter and Mark Sanford, the repubs preached family values. The fact that Cruz was born in Canada will not make a difference.
Mudge
I can only imagine how things would stand if Obama had in fact been born in Kenya. That sentence may be the most coffee through the nose statement you ever made.
Yutsano
@JPL: More are gonna care about the fact that he’s a brown more than the country of his birth. Of course all it would take is a whisper campaign about being foreign-born and he’d be labeled a dirty Messican illegal with nary a dirty paw from a Republican.
TS
@Mudge:
X2
Tom_B
I hope he does run; he’s such an ignorant clown he wouldn’t get close to Romney’s numbers.
Roger Moore
I suspect that the propensity for birthers to accept Cruz will be inversely related to the acceptability of whiter candidates. If he’s the best they’ve got, Cruz will be undeniably a native born American citizen, and I’m guessing that some wingnut will come up with an elaborate explanation for why Cruz is different from Obama. If there’s an acceptable lily white candidate, questions about Cruz’s citizenship will provide ample justification for bigots not to vote for him.
Mr. Longform
If a guy with a hispanicy name like Cruz was born south of the US border instead of north, it would be a tough sell; but Canada is white enough and the parts that aren’t English aren’t Spanish, so it’s all good.
Zach Pruckowski
Strictly speaking, Obama would have only been eligible had he been born in Kenya if his mother had lived 5 years in the US after the age of 14. Since his mother was 18 when he was born, that was not the case.
Obviously a non-issue since Obama was actually born in the USA, but worth knowing.
catclub
@Tom_B: Hope springs infernal.
Are you suggesting that John McCain was NOT an ignorant clown?
I am suggesting that being an ignorant clown is no bar from getting plenty of votes.
By the Way, John McCain was not born in the US, and it was not a problem.
Also by the Way, why the emphasis on his mother’s citizenship?
Was/is Cruz’s father not a US citizen?
jrg
The birthers will support him. And the media will ignore the overwhelming evidence of racism. ’cause balance!
catclub
@Zach Pruckowski: Hasn’t that law also been changed?
RyanayR
McCain was born in panama. George Romney was born in Mexico. Ted Cruz would be the third major Republican presidential candidate in the past 60 years to be foreign-born.
Southern Beale
IOKIYAR.
Really, that is all.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
I believe he’s already been asked if he’s eligible to be president since he was born in Canada.
Yutsano
@jrg: Actually the birfers ain’t all sold yet. I bet Orly lurves her some Cruz though.
RyanayR
shit, upon further review, Cruz would be the 4th republican presidential candidate in the past 60 years to be foreign born.
John McCain 2008- born in Panama
Lowell Weicker Jr 1980- Born in Paris
George Romney 1964- Born in Mexico
Roger Moore
@catclub:
His father was a Cuban immigrant who didn’t become a US citizen until 2005.
kindness
Oh Please. To be surprised that Rush, Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck and all the other TeaHaddists have any actual integrity by comparing President Obama and Senator Cruz’s citizenship requires that those very same people have a tiny bit of integrity to begin with. They have not yet shown us this.
No, Obama is black and that is all they need to cast him aside. But hitching your horse to Cruz? Mama….they have no brains either. This must be the era of the Zombie Reichtwingnutz.
MikeJ
He was born north of the United States with a name from south of the United States, so on average he’s from Kansas.
dmsilev
According to Wiki, he was born in Calgary. Too bad; I was hoping for Quebec. Also, Wiki says that his parents were in Canada because they were in the oil business. Why am I not surprised?
JWR
Well, if it’ll plug Orly Taitz’s pie-hole, I’m all for it.
BGinCHI
When you say “President,” you mean President of DeepSouthistan, right?
Cuz outside the South and the square states he couldn’t get elected dog catcher.
jibeaux
I think the legal issue is that the concept of “natural-born citizen”, as much as I love the Constitution, is ill-advised and undefined. We traditionally only have two types of citizens, citizens by birth and naturalized citizens. So is “natural born” all citizens by birth, or is it meant to be a subset of that? Why pick and choose among citizens in the first place?
Just Some Fuckhead
Hopefully we run Jennifer Granholm against Cruz.
jibeaux
@RyanayR: Well, to pick a nit, the Canal Zone at that time was officially US territory.
It would be fun if someone was born abroad at an American embassy, to noncitizen parents. Technically they were born on American soil, can they be citizens by birth and therefore run for president? I’m sure someone’s probably answered that before and the embassies probably have measures to try to prevent babies being born on their grounds…
David Hunt
@catclub:
From Wikipedia: “His father was a Cuban immigrant to the United States during the Cuban Revolution.”
It doesn’t specify whether the father was a citizen at that time. He (Cruz) was still born a U.S. Citizen as he was the child of a U.S. citizen (his mother) who was working in Canada. The wiki note about his dad has a link to a Texas Tribune article that seems to be about whether he could be President, but I’m at work and don’t have time to read it. For those with the inclination, I believe it was footnote [11] in the Cruz’s Wiki article. Enjoy.
gogol's wife
@RyanayR:
When did Weicker run for President? I don’t remember that. I would have voted for him.
Mnemosyne
@Zach Pruckowski:
Only if she was actually living in Kenya. If she was there on a vacation or visit and went into labor, that rule would not have applied, because it was meant to cover the citizenship of the children of US citizens who primarily resided outside of the US, not people on vacation.
Mnemosyne
@David Hunt:
That would amuse me, because one of the multiple conflicting birther claims is that President Obama can’t be a US citizen even if he was born in the US because his father wasn’t a US citizen.
danimal
Citizenship will be a non-issue for Cruz. Because shut up, that’s why. IOKIYAR–it’s that simple.
Villago Delenda Est
Ted Cruz is a spic, not a ni*CLANG*.
All the difference in the world.
Villago Delenda Est
@jibeaux:
“Natural born” citizens have proven their non-Jewishness all the way back to everyone of their great-grandparents.
Just to be sure.
NCSteve
@Tom_B: He’s not ignorant. He’s a ruthless intelligent man who knows what the ignorant people want to hear and tells it to them.
He’s Huey P. Long with his politics updated rightward to accord with the politics of his chosen base here in the 21st century and just as dangerous to democracy.
Face
@JWR: I read that as “three-hole” instead of pie-hole. Good lord I’m sick at that mental image.
MomSense
@catclub:
Didn’t the Congress actually take up the matter of McCain’s eligibility and pass some sort of super-special resolution?
I don’t know why I feel the need to say this but it was really the Clinton campaign that started the birther, secret muslim, and palling around with terrorist memes.
They cued the crazy up and the Republicans struck with it.
David Hunt
@catclub: The law has been changed, but I don’t think it was retroactive. I knew more about this before the 2008 election, but I recall concluding that if Obama had actually been born outside of the U.S., there was a good argument that he wouldn’t have been born a U.S. citizen. It was a moot, since there’s overwhelming evidence that he was born in Hawaii, but that was the vaguely rational core at the center of all the crazy…
aimai
@Mnemosyne:
This whole weird “lived five years in the US” thing relates to a second or fourth or tenth order Birther “point” which is that Hawaii didn’t become a state until 1959. So that, to their mind, somehow Obama’s mother herself wasn’t 100 percent a citizen in some sense even though her parents were both citizens of the US and she inherited her citizenship from them.
Mark B.
So long as he’s not black, I’m pretty sure the birthers don’t give a damn where Cruz was born.
MrSnrub
The obvious distortion will be to claim he was born in Kenyada.
Omnes Omnibus
@David Hunt: The law was changed between Obama’s and Cruz’s births. If Obama has been born outside the US, his status would have been murky. Cruz should be fine, legally speaking.
@aimai: FWIW even if Hawaii had not been a state in 1961, it was a US territory and being born there would grant natural born status. That is to say, the birthers are idiots on this one too.
Amir Khalid
@Mnemosyne:
Stanley Anne Obama was, at the time of Barack II’s birth, the wife of a Kenyan citizen. Still on the born-in-Kenya hypthetical, might the US government have presumed she had taken up residence with a view to seeking Kenyan citizenship for herself?
Ben Franklin
Better get a crepe curtain up on that Canadian border, cuz the dumber immigrants overshoot the tortilla curtain and bounce back to Texas.
nemesis
Cruz is white-ish. Case closed.
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir Khalid:
Yeah, why not?
Next topic: how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
wonkie
The R base loves to have the change to show how not-racist they are by supporting a not-white-like-us.
They will support family vaues candidates who hike the Appalachian trail.
They will support Christian candidates who had a past interest in witchcraft.
Actually I thik the best way to sum up the base is thhey will support whoever the R candidate is regardless.
Roger Moore
Just wait until a native Puerto Rican tries running.
RaflW
Most of my growing up, I believed I couldn’t be President. I was born in Switzerland to an American dad and Swedish mom (which has led to all sorts of hilarity in the geography-challenged US of A. It’s amazing how many people don’t know that Swedes and Swiss come from different places.)
Anyway, the assumption of me and my friends (and enemies) growing up was that I wasn’t a natural-born citizen. Adding to the fun is that my dad did a Consular Record of Birth about a month after I was born. Smells incredibly suspicious! But the Swiss do not do hospital birth certificates.
As a kid I thought the highest I could rise was Henry Kissinger. I knew that was important, but also awful. Later I realized the job and the person were separable.
reflectionephemeral
After a decade of professing great upset at Clinton’s draft-dodging, the GOP nominated a guy who dodged the draft in a far more dishonest and transparent manner. They didn’t care because Bush was One of Us, and Clinton wasn’t.
I had a long Twitter argument about Cruz’s Canadianness yesterday. I think Cruz would be a terrible candidate, but the Canada thing won’t matter because Republicans won’t be pushing the issue– any more than anyone cared about McCain being born in Panama.
schrodinger's cat
In which universe is Ted Crazy Eyes Cruz considered a hunk? If he is a hunk I am Angelina Jolie.
Citizen_X
Oh please oh please oh please, nominate Cruz. He’ll get 27% of the vote.
Uh,’I mean, no! Please don’t nominate Cruz, Repubs. We’re terrified of him! And he really pisses us off!
Mnemosyne
@aimai:
I think they ended up bringing that up once it turned out it was pretty much impossible for Obama’s mother to have been in Kenya at the time he was born, but IIRC the original claim was that she was in Kenya when he was born. It’s so hard to keep track of the shifting claims that I can’t remember which one came first.
A hint to conspiracy theorists — if you have to keep shifting your claim of how the conspiracy happened to keep your theory alive, you’re manipulating the facts to your conclusion, not letting your conclusion flow from the facts.
@Amir Khalid:
Possibly, but a moot point. It’s also something that could easily have been straightened out when she returned home and resumed living in the US.
David Hunt
@kindness:
I disagree slightly. The fact that he’s a Democrat is all the reason they need to attack him mercilessly. The fact that he’s black becomes the lens that attacks focus through. It’s not that they’re not racist, but if Obama were somehow exactly the same except that he was a Republican with Republican positions, they would love him (in public).
Yutsano
@schrodinger’s cat:
And how do we know you’re not? :P
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
IIRC, this is wrong (or at least arguable) on two counts. For one, Barack II was born before Kenyan independence, so his father was actually a British subject rather than a Kenyan citizen at the time. Also, Barack I may not have been properly divorced from his first wife at the time he married Stanley Anne Dunham, so the legality of the marriage (in the USA, at least) is questionable.
Villago Delenda Est
@RaflW:
Then there are those poor souls from Albuquerque and Santa Fe who called into Atlanta in the 1990s to inquire about tickets to the Olympics and were informed that they needed to talk to the Mexican Olympic committee to get tickets.
GregB
I am pretty sure that any questions about Cruz and his birth will be easily answered with:
See, the Democrats are raaaaacist.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yutsano: Have you seen pics of Rubio?
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
It’s always fun to remind birthers that, by their standards, Barry Goldwater illegally ran for president because he was born in Arizona Territory before it became a state. The stammering goes on for quite a while as they try to process that.
@RaflW:
For a long time there was a weird thing where it was easy for American women to have natural-born citizen children while living overseas, but it was a lot harder for American men. Ex-soldiers who wanted to bring their illegitimate children home from Vietnam ran into all kinds of legal problems because, as far as the US government was concerned, there was no way for them to prove that those were their children, and they basically had to legally adopt their own children to bring them here.
You probably would have had less trouble since your parents were (presumably) legally married, but there were some pretty stupid rules in place for quite a while there.
David Hunt
@jibeaux:
At the time of McCain’s birth, people born in the Canal Zone were not U.S. Citizens. There was a law past when he was (I think) 2 years old that retroactively granted those people citizenship. Of McCain and Cruz, McCain’s claim to eligibility to be President is the weaker claim.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mnemosyne:
If you think that this point matters to these loons, I have prime beachfront property in the Dakotas, including the Brooklyn Bridge, that I think you’re in the market for.
LABiker
Here is everything you need to know about this subject:
Canada = white people.
Kenya = black people.
Meg
The R’s will claim that we are the real hypocrites for bringing this up.
RaflW
@David Hunt:
I agree. They attacked Bill Clinton endlessly. By whatever means necessary.
Your distinction of the Obama attack and the lens is sharp and useful.
Villago Delenda Est
@schrodinger’s cat:
The universe that’s big on musical theater?
David Hunt
@Mnemosyne: Yes, but that one’s an Orly Taitz concoction that she just made up. I’ve shut down a birther who was promoting Taitz by pointing out that was her argument…
Villago Delenda Est
All of them.
RyanayR
@gogol’s wife: He ran in 1980. [email protected]jibeaux: Yeah, I know. Further McCain was born in Panama because his father was stationed there in the Navy. So, yeah, obviously not a real challenge to his eligibility to be president. But really, the issue to poke at is the specious use of place of birth to define eligibility of natural-born citizen status by the right-wing. Obviously their problem with Obama is his parentage.
Michael G
It always struck me as odd that the republicans argued that Guantanamo, being a military base, was exempt from US law as far as torture went, but Panama, being a military base, was full US soil as far as citizenship went.
Amir Khalid
@Villago Delenda Est:
Maybe they were redirected to the Olympic Committee of New Mexico. Although, to be fair, there is a business district by that name in Mexico City.
RaflW
@Mnemosyne:
The key was to record the birth with the consolate in a reasonable timeframe, I’d assume. My parents happily recorded my birth and wanted a passport for me* ASAP so I could be shown off to the the grandparents in Kansas City.
One presumes that kids born to a GI in-country in Vietnam with a local, unmarried mom, that dad 1) didn’t know about Consular Records of Birth or 2) felt the illegitimate stigma and did not make such record or 3) it was a huge pain in the ass for a soldier to get to the right place to file the paperwork while also in uniform and on duty.
*If I remember right, back then, my brother and I were on one passport as little kids.
HelpThe99ers
@NCSteve: +1 – Cruz is Sarah Palin with award-winning debate skills and a prosecutor’s background. We underestimate him at our peril.
Mudge
@Michael G: Guantanamo is “leased”. Not sure if the Canal Zone was, or if it was an actual territory. The lease is a bit fuzzy. Being born in a US Embassy may qualify, but mom maybe better not go to the local hospital.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Omnes Omnibus: @aimai: ETA. Brain fog arrives, as predicted.
RyanayR
@David Hunt: McCain was born an American citizen since both his parents were American. What the question is is if he would qualify as a “natural-born citizen” which is required in the constitution for a person to be able to become president. A “natural-born citizen” is not defined in the constitution explicitly, and in 2011 was defined to include a person “… being born abroad to U.S. citizen-parents”. So McCain would have been a viable presidential candidate even if he was born in Columbia or Costa Rica. Also, I’m guessing here, but the retroactive citizenship law you are referring to, if it exists, probably has more to do with the children of US service members and Panamanian women than two US citizens.
Meg
@David Hunt: In McCain’s case, even he is born outside of America, he is still American citizen since both his parents are. The only question is if he is a natural born American, which is the criterion for running for President. I don’t think his case is weaker than Cruz’s.
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir Khalid:
Like the yahoos in Atlanta have the slightest clue about that district in Mexico City.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@HelpThe99ers: Your summary is exactly correct. He’s a skillful wingnut.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
They eventually created a special visa category (AM series) to cover “Vietnamese Amerasians”. It’s a little bit strange that Vietnam was singled out when there are plenty of illegitimate children of US servicemen in Japan, Korea, the Philippines, etc. but I guess that the Communist takeover made them a special priority.
Violet
@HelpThe99ers: Cruz is not like Sarah Palin because her looks were part of her appeal. Remember “starbursts”? Cruz is smarter and a more talented politician, but he’s not selling sex appeal. You are correct that he should not be underestimated, but that’s because he’s a skilled politician. Sarah Palin is not.
Speaking of Cruz, did this get notice?
Don’t think that’s s smart move by Richardson. Deciding who is and isn’t “a Hispanic” by their political leanings seems like a recipe for trouble. Better to point out who has the best interests of the Hispanic community at heart.
Michael G
Does Cruz have dual Canadian/US citizenship?
If Canada’s laws make him a citizen, I’d argue that he may have split loyalties, which is exactly what the founding fathers were trying to prevent when they said “natural-born”.
Roger Moore
@RaflW:
Or dad had rotated home without leaving a forwarding address before the baby was born, or even before mom knew she was pregnant.
MCA1
@RaflW: Likewise the Danes and the Dutch. I’d venture 60% of Americans think Copenhagen is Amsterdam.
Boots Day
Which is also why Stanley Anne Dunham was an American citizen, no matter how long it took for Hawaii to become a state.
That’s the weird thing: Even if you grant the wingnuts their easily disproven premise, Obama was still a citizen.
Omnes Omnibus
@MCA1: Copenhagen is tobacco. Amsterdam is hash. Everyone knows that.
Zifnab
@Boots Day:
The premise is “Obama is not an American”. Anything which demonstrates otherwise is merely part of the vast liberal conspiracy which undermines our brave white nation.
ericblair
@jibeaux:
My understanding is that way back when there was a fear that we were going to be re-taken-over by parachuting a British royal into the US, getting him instant US citizenship and elected President, and having de facto foreign rule again. So the natural-born rule is supposed to prevent that.
Also, US embassy grounds are not US soil; they’re treated like that per the Vienna Conventions but still are territory of the host country.
Forum Transmitted Disease
Jesus, guys, this is so simple:
Black and/or Democrat: NOT A CITIZEN
Republican: GOD-FEARING AMERICAN PATRIOT SUPER-CITIZEN
dww44
@NCSteve: I couldn’t agree more. Just his aggressive and mean-spirited countenance attests to his agenda. Also, too, his intelligence and education make him even more dangerous. He’s one to be watched closely. For the good of all us.
HelpThe99ers
@Violet: You’re right; I should have ‘splained further. Cruz is as hard right as Palin; I’d be surprised if there was much difference at all in their positions. But where Palin had to rely on sex appeal and folksiness, Cruz can make the argument in a rational-sounding way.
Where Palin stumbled over things like “what newspapers do you read,” Cruz would have a ready answer. Instead of fancy pageant walkin’, Cruz can point to a record of accomplishment that’s hard to parody.
Palin and Cruz come bearing the same message. Cruz is a far more formidable messenger.
Calouste
@Michael G: I don’t know about Cruz’s specific case, or whether he has renounced Canadian citizenship, but iirc being born in Canada automatically grants Canadian citizenship.
karen
Let’s not forget that even if Cruz’s father wasn’t American when Cruz was born, he was Cuban which of course, like with Rubio, doesn’t count at Hickspanick. All they have to do is step a toe on to the land and they’re instant citizens aren’t they? And Cruz is not an idiot and is smarter than Palin was. Or McCain. Or probably most of the GOP.
Rafer Janders
@Amir Khalid:
No, at the time of Obama’s birth, Kenya was a British crown colony within the British Empire, not an independent republic. Barack Obama Sr. was not a “Kenyan citizen” because there was no such thing at the time.
Rafer Janders
@Meg:
There are only two ways to acquire American citizenship: you are born to it or you naturalize as an adult. Everyone who acquires citizenship by birth, whether born in the United States, or in a foreign country to at least one American citizen parent, is a natural-born citizen. That includes Obama (born in the US), McCain (born in Panama to two US parents) and Cruz (born in Canada to one US parent). The only way you are not a natural-born citizen is you achieved citizenship through naturalization.
piratedan
@Mnemosyne: that follows considering the majority of the Republican platform these days reduces wimmin’s rights to be as follows:
you are allowed to birth babies until WE (the hypocritical white guy caucus) tell you otherwise….
These guys want to restore new Southern Aristocracy and if they can get jus primae noctis tossed in, I’ll doubt they’d complain.
Rafer Janders
@Boots Day:
Barack Obama’s mother was born in Kansas, not in Hawaii, and was raised in Kansas, California and Washington State. She only moved to Hawaii after she’d already graduated from high school.
piratedan
@HelpThe99ers: well he looks like his debate skills were gleaned from too many viewings of the Animal House fraternity disciplinary scene if his crossing swords from Feinstein is representative…..
Soonergrunt
@Yutsano: Oh, I don’t know. Cruz was born in one of the RIGHT foreign countries, after all. It’s not like he was born to a US Citizen in Mexico.
Also too is the fact that he is on their side of the issues.
Cacti
@Violet:
I’d say Richardson is taking a not so subtle dig at Cruz being of special-snowflake Cubano heritage. 77 percent of Hispanic-Americans are of Central American or South American descent, and Cuban-Americans have never been simpatico with the former group.
If a Cubano Republican scuttles immigration reform for everyone else, his Cuban identity won’t escape the notice of all the other Hispanic communities.
Yutsano
@Calouste: My mom’s cousin’s kids are dualies because they were born in Winnipeg to a Canadian mother. But they’re American citizens because their father registered them at the US Embassy. So it can get complicated.
Patricia Kayden
@Roger Moore: An elaborate explanation like “he’s White”?
dmbeaster
@catclub: It has been changed. There is now no longer the residency requirement in the US for the US citizen in order for offspring to be US citizens.
Soonergrunt
@Amir Khalid:
There’s a long standing legal precedent called Wong Kim Ark that says that just because somebody’s parents are not citizens, or those parents give up their residency in the US, that does not affect their children if they were minors at the time of the departure or renunciation.
Wong Kim Ark was a US citizen by birth (born here) and was denied reentry into the US by Customs under laws that restricted emigration from China. The Customs agent held that he was a Chinese subject since his parents were that, and the laws in the US at the time purported to deny him US citizenship. The Supreme Court held otherwise, that the Congress could not change or alter rights that the Constitution specifically granted on their own.
Rathskeller
For those who haven’t seen it, The Daily Show had a good short segment on this. The segment ends with an entirely gratuitous slam against Donald Trump, which he could not ignore, because he’s a narcissist. He has turned a 5-second passing insult into a multi-day Twitter fest.
Soonergrunt
@RaflW: When my son was born in the US Army hospital in Heidelberg, Germany, one of the very first pieces of paper I had to fill out in Patient Affairs was a notification to the US Consulate in Wiesbaden that he was born.
Within a week, I had his Consular Report of Birth of a US Citizen Abroad in my hands.
“[Insert Name Here] acquired US Citizenship at birth…”
My nephew, who was born in the German Krankenhaus in Oberammergau, has one too, issued by the US Consulate in Munich, IMS.
schrodinger's cat
@HelpThe99ers: He is not likeable, he will be popular among the 27%. He does not have crossover appeal. As regard to his smarts, I have yet to see any evidence of it.
Mnemosyne
@David Hunt:
Well, come on, if a Russian-born naturalized citizen dentist doesn’t perfectly understand all of the historical ins and outs of US immigration law, who does? Immigration lawyers?
(Note: I am neither a dentist nor an immigration lawyer.)
Soonergrunt
@Mnemosyne:
Well, from her track record, it appears that Orly Taitz isn’t either.
Mnemosyne
@RaflW:
IIRC, it had more to do with the fact that at the time there was no way to prove you were the real father of an illegitimate baby, so the automatic assumption was that the children were not citizens. Obviously, it was easy to prove that the American mother of a child was the real mother, so their illegitimate children were automatic citizens.
The loophole has since been fixed, but it was a problem for a few decades.
unspiek
@MCA1: You don’t need to look at Switzerland and Sweden. Americans don’t even know their own geography! Quick — what state is Springfield in?
weaselone
@unspiek:
Which Springfield?
Just One More Canuck
@Michael G: Cruz returned to the US when he was 4, so I doubt he would have any divided loyalties. Like it or not, he’s all yours. We have enough dipshits of our own to deal with
Just One More Canuck
@unspiek: all of them?
cckids
@schrodinger’s cat:
“Smarter than Sarah Palin” is quite the low bar, isn’t it?
MomSense
@unspiek:
Which one?
Va Highlander
I spent some time on these questions, while looking at the Birther bullshit, and strictly speaking a “natural-born citizen” is one born on US soil, since we are a jus soli nation, not jus sanguinis. Two exceptions are children born on US soil to foreign diplomats and children born to occupying forces.
A child born to an American citizen abroad is a citizen by statue, not naturally by birth. This is why the laws governing such things can and have been changed. McCain’s birth may have been a gray area and this is why they took legislative action specifically declaring his birth kosher.
ericblair
@Va Highlander:
I think this conflates two things. The citizenship status of US citizens born abroad is subject to change by Congress (Rogers v. Bellei), but that doesn’t mean that it’s related to the concept of “natural born citizen”. 1790 citizenship law explicitly deemed children of US citizens born abroad to be natural born citizens, so that’s what the concept was at the time, anyway.
It would be interesting if Cruz never bothered renouncing Canadian citizenship. I’m not real familiar with the ins and outs, but recent (controversial) changes to Canadian law have retroactively made some people Canadian citizens as well. If he suddenly shows up on TV wearing a tuque with a Labatts Blue in one hand, you’ll know what happened, eh.
danielx
Shit floats, so it’s no wonder Cruz is rising to the top so quickly. As to anyone who raises a Kenya-type objection, let’s hear it one more time…
It’s Okay If You’re A Republican!
I don’t even know why anyone is even questioning this; hell, not so long ago California wingnuts wanted a constitutional amendment so Ahnold could run for president.
Tehanu
I’m surprised the wingers haven’t started whinging about “natural-born” meaning “vaginal birth, not C-Section.” Think of how many more people they could exclude from their little club of Saltine-Americans.
Va Highlander
@ericblair:
So, it’s as I said. Children born to US citizens abroad are citizens by statute, not by birth. There’s actually a body of literature on the subject, which you might find interesting.
The issue is addressed in the Constitution only in the 14th Amendment, where no mention of the parent’s citizenship is made.
Rafer Janders
No, it’s not. Children born to US citizens abroad are citizens by birth. The Congressional Research Service looked into this issue a few years ago and concluded that “âThe weight of scholarly legal and historical opinion appears to support the notion that ânatural born Citizenâ means one who is entitled under the Constitution or laws of the United States to U.S. citizenship âat birthâ or âby birth,â [bolding mine] including any child born âinâ the United States, the children of United States citizens born abroad, and those born abroad of one citizen parents who has met U.S. residency requirements.”
Regarding the jus soli / jus sanguinis issue you reference above, CRS found that “from historical material and case law, it appears that the common understanding of the term ânatural bornâ in England and in the American colonies in the 1700s may have included both the strict common law meaning as born in the territory (jus soli), as well as the statutory laws adopted in England since at least 1350, which included children born abroad to British fathers (jus sanguinis, the law of descent).”
I’ve put a links to the study below:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42097.pdf
Montanareddog
@jibeaux: a natural born citizen is any US citizen who came out of his or her mom’s vagina while she screamed in un-anaesthetized agony. C-sections and epidurals render one ineligible to be POTUS.
fubar
@Bulworth:
If by virtually you mean ‘superficially’, then you are technically correct.