Hi! I’m new, so be gentle with me please! I wasn’t sure where to post this. Hopefully if I posted it in the wrong place, a host can let me know!
All of the questions about Obama’s eligibility to be president have me wondering-are there different ‘rules’ as to who qualifies as a ‘natural born citizen’ when dealing with the US Presidency than there are in other areas?
Let me clarify a bit. I was born on a Naval base on (in?) Guam. Despite the fact that it’s been a territory for over 100 years, some people still think it’s another country. :rolleyes: But that’s beside the point. I was born on American soil, so I’m a natural born citizen. So is my half-sister, even though her mother was English. Even if Guam weren’t a territory, however, I’d still be a natural born citizen because my parents are American and were there as Americans (stationed in the Navy). At least, that’s how it was explained to me. 2 American parents, born anywhere=natural-born citizenship, 1 American parent + born in the US=natural-born citizenship. Maybe I’m wrong, though.
On another website, the statement was made that someone in my position would still not be able to be President because Guam isn’t a state. The reason often given for Obama’s lack of ‘qualification’ is that, although he was born in Hawaii, he’s still not a ‘natural-born citizen’ because only one of his parents was American. IOW, the ‘rules’ about who is a natural born citizen are different for someone running for the presidency. Is this true? That’s how some people make it sound, but it makes no sense to me.
So, if I’m a natural-born citizen and Obama is a natural-born citizen, would we still not be eligible to be President because of some different ‘rule’? Or is someone just blowing smoke up my butt? I’m sorry if this is too confusing!
Personally, I just wonder if some people will make up whatever argument they have to to take a shot at Obama, true or not…
Depends on how right-wing your politics are. If it were discovered that Newt was born on Mars to a couple of rutting zebras, for example, I think he’d lose about two or three of his supporters.
In the Constitution it isn’t necessarily strictly defined, but generally the “majority” of scholarly research has said that it basically means “eligible for the full rights of citizenship at the moment of natural birth.”
Citizenship can be conferred at birth based on jus soli or jus sanguinus. Jus soli literally means “right of the soil” and means that if you’re born in the United States, you’re a citizen of the United States.
Territories like Guam are part of the United States, and thus anyone born in those territories is a natural born citizen of the United States. Guam isn’t one of the fifty states, and some things require State residency. For example to send a full privileged Senator or Congressman to the legislature you have to be a resident of a State. To vote for an elector to the electoral college, you must be a resident of a State. However, in virtually every other way a person born in Guam has full American citizenship rights–further, if you move to Hawaii or California you can register to vote.
Jus sanguinus means “right of blood” and means that if you’re born of a U.S. citizen you yourself are a U.S. citizen. If both of your parents are U.S. citizens, then it doesn’t matter where in the world you are born, you are a U.S. citizen from birth with full rights of citizenship. If only one of your parents are U.S. citizens, they must have established residency in the United States for you to be considered a natural born U.S. citizen. Established residency just means that at some point in their life, your American citizen parent must have lived in the United States for a continuous one year period. So if you mother was American and your father was Kenyan, and your mother was born in Kenya to two Americans (meaning she was a natural born citizen through jus soli), but she had never physically lived in the United States her children would not be birthright citizens and would not be natural born citizens.
Examples:
Person born in Guam, to any parent = natural born U.S. citizen.
Person born in Germany, with a mother and father who are American citizens = natural born U.S. citizen.
Person born in Kenya, with a mother who is a citizen and has residency in the United States and a Kenyan father = natural born U.S. citizen.
Person born in Kenya, with a mother who is a citizen but has never established residency in the U.S. and a Kenyan father = not a natural born U.S. citizen.
FYI, John McCain was born outside of the United States, in Panama in the canal zone. He was born on a military base to two American citizens, though, and was unambiguously a natural born American citizen.
Additionally, any random child under the age of 5 who is “found” in the United States and has unknown parentage is given presumptive U.S. citizenship rights. However if evidence surfaces prior to that person’s 21st birthday that they weren’t born here, those rights can be rescinded, once they reach 21 they are citizens no matter what.
Semi related fact I learned from NPR the other day: Mitt Romney’s father George Romney was born in Mexico to Mexican citizens, but still ran for President back in the 60’s. He never got very far, so it never became an issue, but its hard to see how it wouldn’t have if he’d made it as far as winning some of the primaries.
It is NOT true that just because both of your parents are US citizens, then you are a US citizen. If this were true, nearly everyone in Liberia would be a US citizen. (Liberia was a colony founded by former US slaves. If all the founders were citizens, then their children would all be citizens. And if all their children were citizens, then all of the next generation would be citizens, and so on.)
There is no question in the minds of any rational person that if Barack Obama was born in 1961 in Hawaii that he is a citizen. The legitimate question is whether, if this was all a big hoax with fake short-form birth certificates and fake birth announcements placed in 1961 and Obama really had been born in Kenya, would he be a citizen. The problem there is that when Barack was born, his mother was 19. She could not have lived in the United States for five years after her 14th birthday as was required by the law in 1961.
There is no formal legal definition of what a “natural born” citizen is. This has led many of the birthers to invent their own definition of “natural born.” Some say that means both of your parents need to be citizens. Some say the child needs to be born in a state. Some say other ad-hoc crazy things. No court has ever accepted these theories. The mainstream theory is that you are “natural born” if you didn’t have to go through a naturalization process to become a citizen.
In fact, there was a more legitimate question of whether John McCain was a natural born citizen. He was born in 1936 in the Panama Canal Zone. Due to an unintentional quirk in the law, he was not a citizen when he was born, despite the fact that both of his parents were citizens. In 1937 Congress passed a law retroactively granting citizenship to all who were in John McCain’s situation. Did the passage of a retroactive law granting citizenship make him “natural born”? No one really knows. But the US Senate did pass a non-binding resolution declaring him to be a natural born citizen.
So, there is no special type of citizenship. You either are a citizen or you are not. But the Constitution imposes the additional requirement that a US President must be a “natural born citizen” but it doesn’t explain what “natural born” means.
If that were the definition, then John McCain would not qualify, since due to a peculiar loophole, at the time he was born the laws were such that he wouldn’t have been a citizen. The definition I’ve heard, which does include McCain, is that a natural-born citizen is a citizen by virtue of the circumstances of their birth.
The specific loophole, by the way: At the time, the law was that anyone born on US soil was a US citizen, and anyone born outside the jurisdiction of the US to citizen parents was a citizen. But the Canal Zone was under US jurisdiction, while still not being US soil. Congress fixed this loophole a few years after that, and retroactively declared all children so born (which would include McCain) citizens.
The short answer is that U.S. law has only two classes of citizenship: natural-born citizen and naturalized citizen. You can only be one or the other. If you don’t need to be naturalized to attain citizenship, then you are a natural-born citizen and eligible to be president.
The position taken by people usually referred to as Birthers is that a third class somehow exists, even though no court has ever referred to it. Interestingly, it is a tacit admission that their previous position, that Obama wasn’t born in Hawaii, has been destroyed by the release of his long-form birth certificate, even though many of them continue to insist that it’s a forgery.
You’re right that the objection is to Obama as president and the arguments are grabbed out of thin air to provide some legalistic sham of a cover for the underlying hatred. None of them ever stop to consider that their argument would make millions ineligible for the presidency or that they are calling for a bizarre form of judicial activism to create this third class when the legislature has refused to do so. It’s all about hatred for Obama and nothing more.
This is all you need to answer your question. Everything else on this topic is noise.
Anyone you encounter who insists otherwise is to be avoided at all costs. Nothing they have to say on the subject will be anything other than nonsense.
That’s the definition I’ve most frequently seen. When a law is passed retroactively, then legally it is the same as if in 1936 McCain had been born into citizenship, the law doesn’t have to obey the rules of time, and frequently does not.
Except that serious constitutional scholars have gone back and forth on what “natural born citizen” means because it was never and still has never been explicitly defined.
The real way it works is, anytime someone runs for President who is a marginal case, we find out if they successfully get on the ballot. If they do, it basically establishes the precedent that persons in that class can run.
Could you name all these marginal cases? Or any? McCain doesn’t qualify, since he was not a marginal case. I’m having problems with the next one back from there.
George Romney - Born in Mexico to two American parents.
Barry Goldwater - Born in Arizona territory.
Al Gore - Born in Washington, D.C.
Chester A. Arthur - Faced his own version of a birther controversy, as there were widespread rumors he was secretly born in Canada (he said he was born in Vermont.) We also don’t know when he was born, which is just indicative of the lack of record keeping of the time. For years it was publicly thought he had been born in 1830, then he suddenly started claiming he had been born in 1829 (which people seemed to accept on the theory that he probably knows his own birthdate.)
I’m not saying any of these persons weren’t natural born citizens, I’m just saying that they *were all marginal cases, because they caused controversy in their time and lead to people questioning them. Wasn’t it serious? Not really, none of them were seriously challenged.
I’m not sure what it’d take for someone’s candidacy to be seriously challenged.
Ooops. You made me go back and check. Liberia was settled starting in 1820 and declared independence in 1847. The fourteenth amendment was passed in 1868. Former slaves who left before 1868 would probably not have been citizens.
No, the first seven Presidents were eligible because of the special rule in the Constitution: they were citizens at the time of the adoption of the US Constitution, as set out in Article II.
Really? Could you be bothered to name any of these “serious constitutional scholars”? Or better yet, any action taken by a Federal court creating any class of citizenship other than natural born citizen and naturalized citizen?
Yeah. Didn’t think so.
So these are cases you admit were never taken seriously or seriously challenged. How exactly is that relevant to the situation at hand? Isn’t the fact they were never taken seriously rather telling?
What’s more interesting than that is why he was born in Mexico. His grandfather, Mitt’s great-grandfather, was a polygamist who had 4 wives. He fled to Mexico when polygamy was outlawed in the US.
I wasn’t sure where to post this. Hopefully if I posted it in the wrong place, a host can let me know!