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| United States Federal government Topics and information relating to the federal government of interest to SOS associates |
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#1
02-21-2010, 01:35 PM
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The only way to prove that is to show an Official State of Hawaii Birth Certificate. So far, he has not produced one. The only thing they have is a Certificate of Live Birth, which under state law, is NOT an official Birth Certificate. It is basically just a certificate to show the child was born alive and not dead. This certificate can not be used as documentation for a U.S. Passport application. So without that type of documentation, it would lead to other documents being produced that would lead to the original document, whatever that document may be. Yes, he has a passport but what does it say on it? Yes, he went to an American university, but what is on the application and financial paperwork. Without any U.S. documentation produced, how does one jump to the conclusion you jump too? He ran for president because some Democrats sent in a 2nd certified copy of a certificate saying he could run for president. That was the only thing that would have held him back. Of course, Nancy Pelosi would never lie about a thing like that, now, would she? |
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#2
02-22-2010, 09:27 PM
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Why? I didn't say he was. In fact, I haven't represented anything about Obama, other than I can't keep track of all the theories/positions you birther types have been espousing here in support of your proposition. Before CF climbed into the SOS campus clocktower and started spraying this thread with pump-action posts by the dozens (at which point I changed channels), from what I could gather, there were three essential points being made: 1. Obama was born outside the United States and is therefore ineligible to be President. 2. Obama never attended Columbia. 3. Whether or not Obama was born in Hawaii is irrelevant, because his father wasn't a U.S. citizen and, therefore, he shouldn't hold the presidency. To a man, you Birther-ites agree that the former Senator from Illinois has no legal business occupying the White House. However, the assertions you folks roll out in support of your position are so varied, often times conflicting, and mostly requiring extensive conspiracies involving parties with wildly disparate interests to be accurate, that they strain the limits of credibility. Guys, you can't even agree on what the story is. So let me ask you, who really killed JFK? Was it the Cubans, the mob associates of Onassis or the CIA? |
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#3
02-23-2010, 07:47 AM
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This is just like the weird JFK conspiracies theories and the other weird conspiracie theories surrounding the WTC terrorist attack. They exist to deflect from what is clearly apparent and beyond debate.
__________________
The United States of America is for citizens only! Everyone else OUT.
Criminalize asking party affilation for voter registration! End the "two party system"! |
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#4
02-23-2010, 06:56 PM
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You're right, insofar as your statement that Obama's father is not a U.S. citizen is concerned, that is. No one (to my knowledge) has ever claimed he was. That part is not your problem. What is your problem is federal law. You don't seem to understand it. I'll give you a reprint of much of what I posted last time you made this assertion (a post, I might add, to which you didn't respond): That assertion is flat out wrong. You have misstated federal law pertaining to birthright citizenship ... Not only is what you have stated inaccurate, it would be inaccurate if the law was modified in the fashion many border security activists would like to see undertaken. Currently, a child is legally a U.S. citizen if he is born on U.S. soil, regardless of his parents' unlawful residency status. Many individuals feel this is the result of a perversion/misinterpretation of the Civil War Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. They opine that a person should not receive legal residency if born in our country, if one or more parents is an illegal alien. Even under this formula, Barack Obama would be a citizen. So I'll ask you again, Twoller. How does Obama's father's citizenship status prevent our current president from holding office? |
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#5
02-23-2010, 08:11 PM
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For anyone who actually cares about their own US citizenship and the citizens of any country where such a thing is respected, there simply is no other conclusion.
__________________
The United States of America is for citizens only! Everyone else OUT.
Criminalize asking party affilation for voter registration! End the "two party system"! |
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#6
02-24-2010, 10:02 PM
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Well, the Supreme Court has reached another conclusion but ... You're giving me a non-responsive answer. I understand what you're saying. You believe where Obama was born is irrelevant for the purposes of his citizenship status. What I don't understand is how you feel Obama's father's lack of U.S. citizenship impacts his right to be President. Let me narrow it down for you: 1) What do you believe is required for a person to be born a U.S. citizen? 2) Is there anything besides citizenship, based upon your understanding of the Constitution, required to hold the presidency? Last edited by DerailAmnesty.com; 02-24-2010 at 10:04 PM. |
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#7
02-25-2010, 08:33 AM
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__________________
The United States of America is for citizens only! Everyone else OUT.
Criminalize asking party affilation for voter registration! End the "two party system"! |
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#8
02-25-2010, 08:48 AM
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Does this sign reveal Obama's birthplace?
Link
Does this sign reveal Obama's birthplace? Man who posted original photo goes public with mystery's truth Posted: February 24, 2010 8:06 pm Eastern By Joe Kovacs © 2010 WorldNetDaily The old saying goes, "Seeing is believing," but in this age of Photoshop, you can't always trust your own eyes.  E-mails circulating on the Internet contain this image of a billboard purporting Kenya to be the birthplace of President Barack Obama. An online image of a road sign ostensibly declaring Kenya to be the birthplace of Barack Obama is a hoax, according to the man who posted the original photograph on his website, before someone else apparently fudged it. "I know that this picture is not taken in Kenya," said Norway native Jan Krogh, speaking to WND from his current home in Vilnius, Lithuania. "It's clear that there can be no doubt that it's some joke or some hoax." See the movie Obama does not want you to see: Own the DVD that probes this unprecedented presidential eligibility mystery! The image, which has been showing up in e-mail inboxes across the U.S. in recent days, displays a green and white billboard with the message, "Welcome to Kenya, Birthplace of Barack Obama." It also features some text in Arabic. Some of the e-mails carrying the photo have written messages such as: * "Sign on highway in Northern Kenya, near Sudan border." * "Just got back from a trip to Africa. One of the places we stopped for fuel was Kenya!!! Couldn't resist not photographing this billboard." While WND has been unable to determine the identity of the prankster, Krogh, 45, said he's certain the false image was based on his photograph of an actual welcome sign for the Middle East town of Madha, located in Oman on the Arabian Peninsula.  Former journalist Jan Krogh says this photo from Madha, Oman, that he posted on his Geosite website has apparently been altered to proclaim Barack Obama was born in Kenya. (courtesy geosite.jankrogh.com) "I received this photo in 2002," Krogh indicated. "It is taken in Oman. I know the photographer." He said the person who actually took the snapshot is a Swedish colleague. "If you're looking at the foreground. It's the same spot on the metal plots," he continued. "I can see that it's the same background. There is a blue spot in the bottom-left corner which I also have on my photo, which is not from the background, but maybe some pollution on the screen."  A side-by-side comparison of the two images reveals the similarities. Jan Krogh says the sign proclaiming Kenya to be the birthplaces of Barack Obama has obviously been based on a photograph welcoming visitors to Madha, Oman, that is posted on his own website. On his Geosite website, Krogh, a former journalist for Scandinavian publications who himself has hopskotched the globe, displays numerous images from Oman, including a second photo of the Madha welcome sign taken from a different angle.  The sign welcoming visitors to Madha, Oman, as seen from another angle. (courtesy geosite.jankrogh.com) "I'm 100 percent sure that these photos were taken where I had written that they were taken," he told WND. When WND asked him why he thought someone would surreptitiously take his image and transform it into a message about the American president's birthplace, Krogh said: "I have no background to know why. At least in Scandinavia, we don't care where President Obama was born, if it was in Kenya or any other place in the world." He added: "I don't believe the person who did this did [it] in order to [make] some quick money. "I guess it was maybe some practical joke. I don't know." Jan Krogh, a Norwegian citizen now living in Vilnius, Lithuania, has documented his world travels online. Here he points to a border marker in the European country of Liechtenstein. (courtesy Jan Krogh) WND informed Krogh of the ongoing controversy in America concerning the constitutional eligibility of Obama to hold the U.S. presidency, and the fact the commander in chief has still not released his long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate to confirm his actual birthplace. "I'm glad that you are telling me this so I can be prepared when the American Embassy calls me," Krogh told WND. Demand the truth by joining the petition campaign to make President Obama reveal his long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate! Caleb Payne, a former Arabic linguist for the National Security Agency, saw the billboard allegedly from Kenya and tells WND: "I can assure you that the sign is a fake, not because of the picture, but because the Arabic text is completely incorrect. First, it is written left-to-right (Arabic is actually written from right to left) and second: the characters are not connected. Still funny, though! If you are curious, the Arabic reads as follows: Under Kenya is the Arabic for 'Hawaii.' The text at the bottom reads: 'Not Barack Obama's birthplace.'" The issue of whether Obama is legally qualified to serve in the White House continues to be one of high importance for many Americans. Citizens such as Jeanette Walker of Loudon, Tenn., continue to wonder: "Will Obama be required to prove his eligibility for his run in 2012? He should be, just as should anyone else vying for the job. I still believe he's ineligible." In fact, as WND is reporting today, a legislative committee in Arizona has just endorsed a bill that would require presidential candidates to prove – by submitting a birth certificate – they are qualified for the office under the Constitution's demand that they be a "natural born citizen." Ironically, no controlling legal authority ever directly addressed the question of whether Obama met the requirements to be president, that is being 35 years of age, a resident for at least 14 years and a "natural born citizen." WND also has reported lawmakers in Oklahoma, Georgia, Indiana, Virginia and New York are considering similar legislation. Leaders on a growing list also are asking question, including Tennessee gubernatorial candidate Ron Ramsey, Hawaii state Sen. Will Espero, U.S. Rep. Nathan Deal, R-Ga., former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, former House majority leader Tom DeLay, U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., U.S. Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., feminist icon Camille Paglia, New Hampshire State Rep. Laurence Rappaport, former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, R-Ariz., and prominent commentators Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Mark Levin, Lou Dobbs, Peter Boyles and WND's Chuck Norris and Pat Boone. WND has reported on dozens of legal challenges to Obama's status as a "natural born citizen." The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, "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." Some of the lawsuits question whether Obama was actually born in Hawaii, as he insists. If he was born out of the country, Obama's American mother, the suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time. Other challenges have focused on Obama's citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. The cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born. Complicating the situation is Obama's decision to spend sums estimated in excess of $1.7 million to avoid releasing a state birth certificate that would put to rest all of the questions. WND has reported that among the documentation not yet available for Obama includes kindergarten records, Punahou school records, Occidental College records, Columbia University records, Columbia thesis, Harvard Law School records, Harvard Law Review articles, scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, passport, medical records, his files from his years as an Illinois state senator, his Illinois State Bar Association records, any baptism records, and his adoption records. Because of the dearth of information about Obama's eligibility, WND founder Joseph Farah has launched a campaign to raise contributions to post billboards asking a simple question: "Where's the birth certificate?" The campaign followed a petition that has collected more than 490,000 signatures demanding proof of his eligibility, the availability of yard signs raising the question and the production of permanent, detachable magnetic bumper stickers asking the question. The "certification of live birth" posted online and widely touted as "Obama's birth certificate" does not in any way prove he was born in Hawaii, since the same "short-form" document is easily obtainable for children not born in Hawaii. The true "long-form" birth certificate – which includes information such as the name of the birth hospital and attending physician – is the only document that can prove Obama was born in Hawaii, but to date he has not permitted its release for public or press scrutiny. Oddly, though congressional hearings were held to determine whether Sen. John McCain was constitutionally eligible to be president as a "natural born citizen," no controlling legal authority ever sought to verify Obama's claim to a Hawaiian birth. |
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#9
02-24-2010, 10:45 AM
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Tuesday, September 8, 2009 The Natural Born Citizen Clause of Our U.S. Constitution Requires that Both of the Child’s Parents Be U.S. Citizens At the Time of Birth When interpreting the Constitution, we must decide whether we will look to the document as an original and static one whose meaning has already been established at a given time by the People and its Framers or one that is living and which can be changed over any given time by a court of law. See the address of Justice Antonin Scalia to the 2008 Annual National Lawyers Convention on November 22, 2008, at the Mayflower Hotel, in Washington, D.C. http://www.fed-soc.org/publications/...pub_detail.asp. (advocates originalism rather than living constitutionalism). I submit that Article II’s “natural born Citizen” clause has a fixed and knowable meaning which was established at the time of its drafting and should therefore be interpreted through the eyes of the original Framers that drafted and ratified the clause so as to determine what they intended the clause to mean (original intent theory). I also submit that we should interpret the “natural born Citizen” clause in a way that reasonable persons living at the time of its adoption would have declared the ordinary meaning of the text to be (original meaning theory). This is not living constitutionalism but rather originalism or textualism as applied to interpreting the Constitution. It is this latter approach that I will utilize in this article. E. Vattel stated in 1758, as translated into English in 1797: "The citizens are the members of the civil society: bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens. As the society cannot exist and perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights. The society is supposed to desire this, in consequence of what it owes to its own preservation; and it is presumed, as matter of course, that each citizen, on entering into society, reserves to his children the right of becoming members of it. The country of the fathers is therefore that of the children; and these become true citizens merely by their tacit consent. We shall soon see, whether, on their coming to the years of discretion, they may renounce their right, and what they owe to the society in which they were born. I say, that, in order to be of the country, it is necessary that a person be born of a father who is a citizen; for if he is born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of his birth, and not his country." E. Vattel, The Law of Nations or Principles of Natural Law, Sec. 212 Citizens and natives. In Footnote 1 at the end of Sec. 212, Vattel stated that “as a general rule” the child inherits his father’s citizenship, or his mother’s but only if she is not married. The first thing that we have to understand about what Vattel wrote is that he made a distinction between a “citizen” and a “natural born Citizen.” A citizen is simply a member of the civil society who is bound to the society by certain duties and subject to its authority. “Citizens” also participate equally in all the advantages the society has to offer. On the other hand, a “natural born Citizen” means much more than just “citizen.” Vattel required that for a child to be a “natural born citizen,” or what he called in French in his 1758 first edition of The Law of Nations or Principles of Natural Law, les naturels, ou indigenes (the “natives or indigines”-The Venus, 12 U.S. (8 Cranch) 253 (1814)), the child must be born in the country to both parents who are also citizens of the same country. In the original French, Vattel wrote: "Les naturels, ou indigenes, sont ceux qui sont nes dans le pays de parents citoyens,” meaning the "natives or indigines" are those born in the country of citizen parents. Both the Framers and later English translators of Vattel's treatise replaced the words"natural born Citizen" for the words "natives or indigenes." From Madison's notes, we see that there were some delegates who were concerned about foreigners. For example, from Max Farrand's transcripts of Madison's notes (August 9 and August 13, 1787), there is the following concerning the House of Representatives eligibility requirements: "Mr. Gerry wished that in future the eligibility might be confined to Natives." The word "native" occurs multiple times in the notes for these two days. (The phrase "natural born citizen" was not used here by the delegates.). The word "native" was a synonym for the phrase "natural born citizen." The delegates had already used the term “natural born citizen” when proposing the requirements for President, Vice President, and either House of Congress and later used the word “natives” when referring to eligibility requirements for the House of Representative. There is further evidence of this in at least three works: Blackstone's "Commentaries on the Laws of England" (see Book the First: The Rights of Persons; Chapter the Tenth: Of People, Whether Aliens, Denizens or Natives.), translations of Quintilian's "Institutio Oratoria", and the 1797 English edition of Vattel's "The Law of Nations or Principles of Natural Law." In the beginning of his definition, Vattel required that the children be born of “parents” who are citizens. The use of the word “parents” refers to both mother and father. If he required only one parent such as the father, he would have said “of fathers who are citizens” and not “of parents who are citizens.” He did later refer to “fathers,” but only because wives automatically acquired the citizenship of their husbands the same way children did. This rule was carried into our own naturalization laws, wherein citizenship can be derived from a close relation. Historically, a number of U.S. laws have provided for the automatic naturalization of children or wives (not husbands) of naturalized U.S. citizens. In some periods of our history, these laws provided that married women derived citizenship from their husband and had no control over their status. Under the Act of 10 February 1855, a woman automatically became an American upon marrying a U.S. citizen or following the naturalization of her foreign husband. Kelly v. Owen, 74 U.S. 7 Wall. 496 (1868). The 1922 Married Women's Act (or the Cable Act) finally severed the link between naturalization and marital status for most women. Hence, if Vattel meant to focus only on “fathers,” he would have used “fathers” throughout his definition and never mentioned “parents” when he first defined “natural born Citizen,” for there would not have been any need to use the word “parents” when “fathers” would have sufficed. Hence, Vattel would have focused on the citizenship of the father since that citizenship would determine that of both the mother and child. It is also noteworthy that Vattel had no problem allowing the child to inherit the citizenship of the mother when the mother was not married to the child’s father. Given that Vattel in effect really focused on the citizenship of both the child’s father and mother in defining a “natural born Citizen,” Vattel’s definition of a “natural born Citizen” does not violate the equal protection guarantee embedded in the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause. Miller v. Albright, 523 U.S. 420 (1998); Nguyen v. INS, 533 U.S. 53, 121 S.Ct. 2053; 150 L.Ed.2d 115 (2001). There is other evidence in his treatise that shows that Vattel meant to refer to both the child’s mother and father in his definition of a “natural born citizen.” When defining what a country is in Section 122, he stated the “term signifies the state, or even more particularly the town or place, where our parents had their fixed residence at the moment of our birth…. A man ought to preserve gratitude and affection for the state to which he is indebted for his education, and of which his parents were members when they gave him birth….” In commenting on the citizenship status of children born at sea at Section 216, he stated that a child born abroad a foreign vessel that is docked in a port belonging to their own nation is reputed born in the country, provided “she [the mother] and her husband have not quitted their native country to settle elsewhere.” In commenting upon vagrants in Section 219he stated: “Vagrants are people who have no settlement. Consequently those born of vagrant parents have no country, since a man’s country is the place where, at the time of his birth, his parents had their settlement (Section 122), or it is the state of which his father was then a member…” Given that Vattel in effect really focused on the citizenship of both the child’s father and mother in defining a “natural born Citizen,” Vattel’s definition of a “natural born Citizen” does not violate the equal protection guarantee embedded in the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause. Miller v. Albright, 523 U.S. 420 (1998); Nguyen v. INS, 533 U.S. 53, 121 S.Ct. 2053; 150 L.Ed.2d 115 (2001). The Framers were very familiar with William Blackstone. We can also see in the writings of Blackstone that the allegiance of both parents to the King was needed to avoid dual allegiance in the child. Blackstone wrote: |
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#10
02-24-2010, 10:45 AM
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"When I say, that an alien is one who is born out of the king's dominions, or allegiance, this also must be understood with some restrictions. The common law indeed stood absolutely so; with only a very few exceptions: so that a particular act of parliament became necessary after the restoration, for the naturalization of children of his majesty's English subjects, born in foreign countries during the late troubles. And this maxim of the law proceeded upon a general principle, that every man owes natural allegiance where he is born, and cannot owe two such allegiances, or serve two masters, at once. Yet the children of the king's embassadors born abroad were always held to be natural subjects: for as the father, though in a foreign country, owes not even a local allegiance to the prince to whom he is sent; so, with regard to the son also, he was held (by a kind of postliminium) to be born under the king of England's allegiance, represented by his father, the embassador. To encourage also foreign commerce, it was enacted by statute 25 Edw. III. st. 2. that all children born abroad, provided both their parents were at the time of the birth in allegiance to the king, and the mother had passed the seas by her husband's consent, might inherit as if born in England: and accordingly it hath been so adjudged in behalf of merchants. But by several more modern statutes these restrictions are still farther taken off: so that all children, born out of the king's ligeance, whose fathers were natural-born subjects, are now natural-born subjects themselves, to all intents and purposes, without any exception; unless their said fathers were attainted, or banished beyond sea, for high treason; or were then in the service of a prince at enmity with Great Britain (emphais in the original)."
William Blackstone, Commentaries 1:354, 357--58, 361-62 (1765). We can see that even the English Parliament gave importance to a child having both parents be “in the allegiance of the king,” which under English common law meant the parents would have been “natural born subjects.” By having both parents be “natural born subjects,” the child would not have been born with any other conflicting allegiance other than the one that attached from the foreign soil. Parliament was willing to live with any allegiance attaching to the child from the foreign soil but not with any that may attach by descent from one of the parents, the latter one being by nature a much more stronger one. It was only later in time that the rule was made less restrictive and allowed for just the father to be a “natural born subject.” There is historical evidence that the Founders borrowed from the Dutch much more heavily than from the British when making the new nation. During the revolutionary period Dutch law provided for citizenship by jus sanguinis. There is considerable evidence that the Framers were also influenced by the citizenship law of Holland. “The American colonists had become familiar with the rights of citizenship possessed in other countries, both from the fact that some of them resided in Holland for a time, before they came to America, and from the further fact that the New York colony was essentially Dutch in its original settlement and government.” John S. Wise, A Treatise on American Citizenship (1906). In Holland, “[c]itizenship could be acquired in several ways. Probably the most common was birth. Some towns accepted everyone as citizen who was baptized in a local church. But more commonly it was required that one’s parents were citizens too. . . .” R. Po-chia Hsia & Henk F. K. van Nierop, Calvinism and Religious Toleration in the Dutch Golden Age 161(2002). “One’s parents” would necessarily included one’s mother and father. This Dutch law is consistent with Vattel’s definition of what is a “natural born citizen.” Apart from the heavy Dutch influence upon the Founders, when the Framers drafted the Constitution, they relied heavily upon Vattel to guide them. Citizenship was a topic that affected U.S. relations with other nations. Given that citizenship affects "the behavior of nation states with each other" (Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, 542 U.S. 692 (2004), the Founders would have looked to the law of nations to define it for the purposes of the new nation. The law of nations definition on citizenship also gave uniformity to the subject area, which the Framers wanted to achieve for citizenship laws as they did for naturalization laws. Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1, 36 (Wheat) (1824). They would therefore have referred to and accepted Vattel's law of nations definition to give meaning to what an Article II “natural born Citizen” was. The meaning of a “natural born Citizen” as expressed by Vattel, including that both parents of the child must be citizens at the time of the child’s birth in order to make the child a “natural born Citizen,” was carried forward in American history following the Founding. The standard provided by Vattel has not changed in our jurisprudence and is still valid today as it was during the Founding. Also, the Fourteenth Amendment has not changed the meaning of a “natural born Citizen.” Legislative activity by the early Congresses provides insight into the question of whether Vattel required one or two parents to be citizens. There are Congressional acts that were passed after the Constitution was adopted that give us insight into what the Framers of the Constitution meant by “natural born Citizen.” The 1790 Congress, many of whose members had been members of the Constitutional Convention, passed the Naturalization Act of 1790 (1 Stat.103,104) which provided that “And the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond the sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens.” This phrasing followed the literal terms of British statutes, beginning in 1350, under which persons born abroad, whose parents were both British subjects, would enjoy the same rights of inheritance as those born in England; beginning with laws in 1709 and 1731, these statutes expressly provided that such persons were natural-born subjects of the crown.” The Naturalization Act of 1790 declared these children to be "natural born Citizens," but only retrospectively. See Weedin v. Chin Bow, 274 U.S. 657 (1927). It is interesting to note that George Washington was president of the Constitutional Convention and President of the United States when this bill became law and if he had disagreed with the two U.S. citizen-parent requirement, he could have vetoed this bill. One would then at first think that this legislation strongly suggests that the Framers of the Constitution understood this phrase to refer to citizenship acquired from both of the child’s parents at birth, regardless of whether or not that birth had taken place in the United States. This statute shows what role the parents played in the minds of the early founders. While only retrospectively, the First Congress was willing to declare a child born out of the United States to two United States parents a “natural born Citizen.” This was not consistent with what Vattel wrote in The Law of Nations of Principles of Natural Law, at Sec. 215. Children of citizens, born in a foreign country, where he declared these children just “citizens” and not “natural born citizens”: "It is asked, whether the children born of citizens in a foreign country are citizens? By the law of nature alone, children follow the condition of their fathers, and enter into all their rights (Sec. 212); the place of birth produces no change in this particular, and cannot of itself furnish any reason for taking from a child what nature has given him; I say 'of itself,' for civil or political laws may, for particular reasons, ordain otherwise. . . .” (emphasis supplied). Clearly, Vattel addressed the question of whether these children are “citizens,” not “natural born citizen.” He does not address the question of whether they are “natural born citizens” because according to his own definition, a child had to be born “in the country” in order to be a “natural born citizen.” Being born abroad and therefore not “in the country,” such a child could not be a “natural born citizen.” In this connection and as an aside which applies to the question of whether Senator McCain is an Article II “natural born Citizen,” it should be noted that according to Vattel, being physically born out of the country did not necessarily mean that one was not born “in the country.” Vattel explained that if a child was born “in the armies of the state,” that child was “reputed born in the country; for a citizen, who is absent with his family on the service of the state, but still dependent on it, and subject to its jurisdiction, cannot be considered as having quitted its territory.” Vattel, Sec. 217. Since this child would have been born in the foreign “armies of the state,” he would normally not be granted citizenship in the country in which he was physically born. Additionally, the country on whose soil the child might be born might adhere to a jus sanguinis system of conferring citizenship (meaning that born on its soil alone would not confer citizenship and therefore allegiance and loyalty on the child). Being born under those conditions, this child would therefore be born with sole allegiance to the country of his parents and would qualify as a “natural born citizen” of that country. While the 1790 act naturalized all "persons" and so included women, it also declared that "the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States...." This prevented the automatic grant of citizenship to children born abroad whose mother, but not father, had resided in the United States. Citizenship was inherited exclusively through the father. As we have seen above, Congress did not remove the inequity until 1934. This focus on the father as the source of citizenship (but not meaning that the status of the mother was not considered) is consistent with what Vattel wrote in Section 212 of The Law of Nations. This is further evidence that the Framers relied upon Vattel in defining citizenship for the new Republic. In 1795 the Congress passed the Naturalization Act of 1795 which removed the words “natural born” from the term “natural born citizen” and thereby just left “citizens” as the status to be given to children born out of the United States. The fact that the 1790 Act as written was short lived and was only retrospective shows that Congress just wanted to make certain persons born abroad during the early years of the Republic “natural born Citizen” so that they could be eligible to be President. This sort of special allowance was comparable to the grandfather clause of Article II which allowed a “citizen” to be President provided that he was such at the time of the adoption of the Constitution which the Framers in 1790 knew occurred in 1789. It seems that the Third Congress passed this amendment to the 1790 Act to clarify for those living at that time who was and who was not a “natural born Citizen” per the Framers intent at that time, since the 1790 Act had introduced confusion into that subject regarding the use of those special words as found in Article II. United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649, 714 (1898) (Fuller, C.J., dissenting) (statute “passed out of abundant caution to obviate misunderstandings” about the citizenship status of foreign-born children of Americans). It is again important to note that George Washington was also President in 1795, making him aware of this change by the Third Congress. If he disagreed with the clarification and change in the wording in the new 1795 Act, he would have vetoed it. The 1790 and 1795 Acts are contemporaneous evidence of who the Framers meant to include as “natural born Citizens.” Pryor, The Natural-Born Citizen Clause and Presidential Eligibility: An Approach for Resolving Two Hundred Years of Uncertainty, 97 Yale L.J. 881 (1988). |
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Hybrid Mode
