Birther Bills

[Muffin]

And then there is that Republican Chester A. Arthur.

[Lord_Feldon]

The only way to be “treated like” a natural born citizen is to be elected president, so I’m not sure when the issue has ever come up for a person born abroad.

@China_Guy

The children of *one *US citizen have always been NBC’s or treated as such as long as they get registered with the US consulate.

Actually, no, they haven’t. They aren’t even always citizens now. The parent has to meet residency requirements. A US citizen who has never lived in the US won’t pass on citizenship if the other parent isn’t also a citizen.

[crowmanyclouds]

@appleciders

… As to John McCain’s birth, wasn’t he born on a military base? Military bases and consulates are usually considered the territory of the country that maintains the base or consulate, not the country that leases or sells the land for the base. …

John McCain (born 1936) … was born at Coco Solo Naval Air Station in the Panama Canal Zone. …
… The former unincorporated territory of the Panama Canal Zone and its related military facilities were not regarded as United States territory at the time, but 8 U.S.C. § 1403, which became law in 1937, retroactively conferred citizenship on individuals born within the Canal Zone on or after February 26, 1904, and on individuals born in the Republic of Panama on or after that date who had at least one U.S. citizen parent employed by the U.S. government or the Panama Railway Company; 8 U.S.C. § 1403 was cited in Judge Alsup’s 2008 ruling, described below. A March 2008 paper by former Solicitor General Ted Olson and Harvard Law Professor Laurence H. Tribe opined that McCain was eligible for the Presidency. In April 2008, the U.S. Senate approved a non-binding resolution recognizing McCain’s status as a natural-born citizen. In September 2008, U.S. District Judge William Alsup stated obiter in his ruling that it is “highly probable” that McCain is a natural-born citizen from birth by virtue of 8 U.S.C. § 1401, although he acknowledged the alternative possibility that McCain became a natural-born citizen retroactively, by way of 8 U.S.C. § 1403. These views have been criticized by Gabriel J. Chin, Professor of Law at the University of Arizona, who argues that McCain was at birth a citizen of Panama and was only retroactively declared a born citizen under 8 U.S.C. § 1403, because at the time of his birth and with regard to the Canal Zone the Supreme Court’s Insular Cases overruled the Naturalization Act of 1795, which would otherwise have declared McCain a U.S. citizen immediately at birth.[67] The U.S. Foreign Affairs Manual states that children born in the Panama Canal Zone at certain times became U.S. nationals without citizenship. It also states in general that “it has never been determined definitively by a court whether a person who acquired U.S. citizenship by birth abroad to U.S. citizens is a natural-born citizen […]”. In Rogers v. Bellei the Supreme Court only ruled that “children born abroad of Americans are not citizens within the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment”, and didn’t elaborate on the natural-born status. Similarly, legal scholar Lawrence Solum concluded in an article on the natural born citizen clause that the question of McCain’s eligibility could not be answered with certainty, and that it would depend on the particular approach of “constitutional construction”. The urban legend fact checking website Snopes.com has examined the matter and cites numerous experts. It considers the matter “undetermined”. [RIGHT]CITE[/RIGHT]

The current Birther definition of “natural-born citizen” (as seen in the Venn diagram here) doesn’t seem to include retroactive declarations conferring citizenship, it does include dual citizenship as a disqualification.

Somehow I doubt that if John Sidney McCain III had won the 2008 election we’d be seeing any of the craziness we’ve seen for the last 3+ years . . . of course that might just be me, but I doubt that too.

CMC fnord!

[Fear_Itself]

@crowmanyclouds

The current Birther definition of “natural-born citizen” (as seen in the Venn diagram here) doesn’t seem to include retroactive declarations conferring citizenship, it does include dual citizenship as a disqualification.!

By that standard, Chester A. Arthur was ineligible to be president:

Arthur was sworn in as president when President Garfield died after being shot. Since his Irish father William was naturalized 14 years after Chester Arthur’s birth,[44] his citizenship status at birth is unclear, because he was born before the 1868 ratification of the 14th Amendment, which provided that any person born on United States territory and being subject to the jurisdiction thereof was considered a born U.S. citizen, and because he was a British subject at birth by patrilineal jus sanguinis.[45] Arthur’s natural-born citizenship status is therefore equally unclear.

[Muffin]

That, and the birthers of that century thought that he was born in Lower Canada.

[crowmanyclouds]

The part of this I love best;
Assume they’re right, a child born to, one or more, American citizens in another country is a NBC but being born with dual citizenship means you’re not a NBC. That would mean that NBC status isn’t a question of American law, it’s a question of the citizenship laws of the foreign country you’re born in. Born in a jus sanguinis country you’re cool, born in a jus soli you’re screwed.

If you accept that dual citizenship ≠ NBC how would we deal with the problem of other nations deciding to fuck with our elections by declaring candidates they didn’t want to see elected citizens?

I can’t get my head around the notion that there are people who don’t want American judges even mentioning foreign laws when considering questions of American law, but have no problem with foreign laws trumping (hehe) American law on questions of NBC status.

CMC fnord!

[Lord_Feldon]

@appleciders

As to John McCain’s birth, wasn’t he born on a military base? Military bases and consulates are usually considered the territory of the country that maintains the base or consulate, not the country that leases or sells the land for the base.

US military bases are not considered to be “in the United States” for the purposes of the 14th Amendment. Neither are unincorporated territories of the US (which every territory except one of the unpopulated ones is). People born outside of the United States are only citizens if and when Congress says so. Congress definitely said that John McCain was a citizen in 1937 (a year after his birth), but before that, birth in the canal zone quite possibly did not confer citizenship (no matter what the citizenship of the parents).

(The other presidential candidate who gets mentioned when places of birth are talked about, John McCain’s predecessor in the Senate Barry Goldwater, was born in the Arizona Territory, which incorporated into the US, so he was a citizen from the moment of birth without having to find it somewhere in an act of Congress.)

[Lord_Feldon]

@Lord_Feldon

US military bases are not considered to be “in the United States” for the purposes of the 14th Amendment.

Only the bases that aren’t in the US, of course. :smack:

[Muffin]

@Lord_Feldon

Only the bases that aren’t in the US, of course. :smack:

Actually, since 2000, all your base are belong to us.

[Little_Nemo]

@crowmanyclouds

The current Birther definition of “natural-born citizen” (as seen in the Venn diagram here) doesn’t seem to include retroactive declarations conferring citizenship, it does include dual citizenship as a disqualification.

Somehow I doubt that if John Sidney McCain III had won the 2008 election we’d be seeing any of the craziness we’ve seen for the last 3+ years . . . of course that might just be me, but I doubt that too.

Personally, I have no doubts that both Barack Obama and John McCain are natural born citizens. But it’s clear that McCain’s status is much more questionable than Obama’s. So it’s fun watching conservative partisans try to craft a carefully worded definition of natural born citizenship that excludes Obama while including McCain.