# John Eastman's essay re: Kamala Harris' citizenship: lawyers, does he have a point? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 17, 2020, 11:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-eastmans-essay-re-kamala-harris-citizenship-lawyers-does-he-have-a-point/918307 "2020-08-17T11:03:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2020, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-eastmans-essay-re-kamala-harris-citizenship-lawyers-does-he-have-a-point/918307/122 "2020-08-31T01:43:45Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > The fact that they passed a law to rectify this indicates that there was in fact a legal issue. In my jurisdiction, almost all of the laws are dated after 1970. They weren’t all broken: it’s not that ‘murder’ was technically legal before 1970: they just decided that things would be clearer if they re-wrote everything. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2020, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-eastmans-essay-re-kamala-harris-citizenship-lawyers-does-he-have-a-point/918307/123 "2020-09-02T14:16:56Z")
> [@Muffin](#): > > Welcome to Newsweek. It is not journalism – not even remotely. Not for the past decade, anyway. Still can be useful in some cases, especially if backed up by other sources. Pay attention to who is credited as the author and ensure it’s not some wingnut or moonbat. ---
**Author:** ![Falchion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a88e57/32.png) [@Falchion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Falchion)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2020, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-eastmans-essay-re-kamala-harris-citizenship-lawyers-does-he-have-a-point/918307/124 "2020-09-14T16:42:27Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > ISTM from all the sources I can find about it, it had as its real intention to equalize the transmission of citizenship by all US citizens to their children within the Zone – prior to that apparently _some_ US citizens could, and some could _not_ , transmit citizenship to their offspring born in the Zone as they would in other jurisdictional areas, I suppose because of omissions in the specific statutes applied to the Zone(\*). ISTM hat **should not have affected _McCain_** himself but could have affected others born in similar circumstances. I hadn’t seen that you had replied to this and I didn’t want to be non-responsive. You’re right, of course, about your nitpick. Certainly some citizens would have transmitted their citizenship and others would not: the governing statute in 1937 would have determined the citizenship of the child based on a combination of citizenship and age of the parents consistent with the rules for children of citizens born outside the United States. (Unless you accept the “limits and jurisdiction” theory). It’s not an odd “omission” – it’s just a reflection of the fact that the Canal Zone (like other unincorporated territories) was never “in” the United States. The effect (and likely purpose) of the 1937 Act is to remove those conditions–any child born to any citizen parent is a citizen–while not extending birth citizenship more broadly. (Interestingly, it would seem that it might grant citizenship to people whose parent’s became citizens after their birth). It seems unlikely that we will ever know whether a person who (unlike McCain) became a citizen after birth by virtue of this statute would be a “natural born citizen”. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2020, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-eastmans-essay-re-kamala-harris-citizenship-lawyers-does-he-have-a-point/918307/125 "2020-09-14T17:23:35Z")
> [@Falchion](#): > > The effect (and likely purpose) of the 1937 Act is to remove those conditions–any child born to any citizen parent is a citizen–while not extending birth citizenship more broadly. Right. Puerto Rico had a similar separate amendment to their 1917 citizenship statute also in the 30s, so that suggests at least in two specific cases Congress appears to have seen a need to clarify the rules that applied in one specific territory as opposed to all. Apparently in the 1940 Nationality Act Congress finally got to unify the rule (though at the same time that Act declared soil birthright to apply in PR). ---
**Author:** ![Falchion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a88e57/32.png) [@Falchion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Falchion)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2020, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-eastmans-essay-re-kamala-harris-citizenship-lawyers-does-he-have-a-point/918307/126 "2020-09-14T18:19:51Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > Right. Puerto Rico had a similar separate amendment to their 1917 citizenship statute also in the 30s, so that suggests at least in two specific cases Congress appears to have seen a need to clarify the rules that applied in one specific territory as opposed to all. Apparently in the 1940 Nationality Act Congress finally got to unify the rule (though at the same time that Act declared soil birthright to apply in PR). I don’t think it’s “clarify the rules” so much as “identify a new category” (or “change the rules”). My take away (which has really been my argument throughout this thread) is that the default citizenship rules for “not in the United States” apply in unincorporated territories, but Congress can (and has) created special rules for most of those territories (American Samoa remains, as I understand it, an exception). But under those default rules many people (including John McCain) were born US citizens. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2020, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-eastmans-essay-re-kamala-harris-citizenship-lawyers-does-he-have-a-point/918307/127 "2020-09-21T05:16:52Z")
Um, if the argument is that people on temporary visas don’t count as “under US jurisdiction,” and therefore their kids aren’t citizens, the why did Boris Johnson - the prime minister of the UK, who also has British citizenship by descent - have to go to lengths to renounce his US citizenship after the tax reporting rules made it inconvenient for him to have that citizenship? His parents were students in the US and they left when he was three months old. But he still had to file US taxes until he renounced his citizenship. He didn’t merely live for years as a dual US-UK citizen, he formally renounced his US citizenship, which he could not have done if he weren’t already a citizen. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-eastmans-essay-re-kamala-harris-citizenship-lawyers-does-he-have-a-point/918307.md?page=6)