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On the initial application, no. The State Dept DOES follow up with a more extensive investigation, as needed.
If parents' place of birth and citizenship status weren't a factor in passport eligibility, it wouldn't be included as required information on the passport application.
When would parents' place of birth and citizenship status be a factor?
Maybe when someone is born outside the country. But not when they are born in the United States. As Barack Obama was.
I don't think you fully realize the implications of your argument. It makes US citizenship laws secondary to foreign citizenship laws. If your grandfather was Italian, suddenly you're not a natural-born citizen, by virtue of laws in Italy? Numerous countries have laws that recognize descendants and afford them citizenship status. Those laws do not, and should not, affect US citizenship law. Obama wasn't born a Brit. He was born an American who could also claim British citizenship if he'd wanted. He never did. He never owed allegiance to any other country than the United States. Since we only have natural-born citizens, and naturalized citizens, and he was never naturalized, he is a natural-born citizen.
Nations have to get along with each other while maintaining their autonomy. (See Vattel)
Many monarchies have learned that adulterous relationships can be disastrous, if not catastrophic.
A country has got to be its own man, man.
Last edited by Nonarchist; 04-09-2013 at 10:44 AM..
Exactly. For that reason AND the fact that Gray explicitly limited the applicability of his ruling, Wong Kim Ark has NO bearing on Obama's presidential eligibility whatsoever. Obama doesn't meet the limiting conditions specifically set forth in Gray's ruling. Obama's father was never permanently domiciled in the U.S. There are public documents attesting to that fact. The Ankeny ruling is extremely flawed. Ridiculously so.
I don't think you fully realize the implications of your argument. It makes US citizenship laws secondary to foreign citizenship laws.
No, it doesn't. It makes them coexist with foreign citizenship laws, a condition that the U.S. State Department clearly admits exists in reality:
Quote:
Each country has its own citizenship laws based on its own policy. Persons may have dual nationality by automatic operation of different laws rather than by choice.
Is there any federal ruling which specifically states that a foreign citizen cannot pass his citizenship in accordance with his own country's nationality law to his U.S. born child?
Can you cite any SCOTUS case in which it was ruled that a British citizen father could not transmit British citizenship to his U.S. born child?
If your grandfather was Italian, suddenly you're not a natural-born citizen, by virtue of laws in Italy?
A grandfather is not a parent.
Obama's specific case is that he had a non-citizen parent who rightfully passed his own foreign citizenship to his child at birth according to his own country's citizenship law.
No, it doesn't. It makes them coexist with foreign citizenship laws, a condition that the U.S. State Department clearly admits exists in reality: US State Department Services Dual Nationality
Is there any federal ruling which specifically states that a foreign citizen cannot pass his citizenship in accordance with his own country's nationality law to his U.S. born child?
Can you cite any SCOTUS case in which it was ruled that a British citizen father could not transmit British citizenship to his U.S. born child?
Yes, our laws coexist with foreign citizenship laws. But YOUR argument makes US laws subject to the laws of other countries. Again, are those of Italian descent barred from running for the President?
Obama's specific case is that he had a non-citizen parent who rightfully passed his own foreign citizenship to his child at birth according to his own country's citizenship law.
Are Americans of Italian descent barred from running for President?
Yes, our laws coexist with foreign citizenship laws. But YOUR argument makes US laws subject to the laws of other countries. Again, are those of Italian descent barred from running for the President?
Now, what kind of a question is that?
Wasn't Christoper Columbus Italian?
Wasn't he Americas' first citizen?
Even notwithstanding his sleazy deals with the Spanish?
So the permanent domicile excludes people, but his explicit mention of Wong's parents being Chinese, doesn't exclude people? If you're going to use a description of Wong's parents as the definitive method of exclusion, then you have to use the whole description.
The meaning and intent of Gray's deliberate statement are quite clear:
Quote:
The evident intention, and the necessary effect, of the submission of this case to the decision of the court upon the facts agreed by the partieswere to present for determination the single question stated at the beginning of this opinion, namely, whether a child born in the United States, of parent of Chinese descent, who, at the time of his birth, are subjects of the Emperor of China, but have a permanent domicil and residence in the United States, and are there carrying on business, and are not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China, becomes at the time of his birth a citizen of the United States. For the reasons above stated, this court is of opinion that the question must be answered in the affirmative.
You can't get any more explicit than the Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman stating explicitly in the Congressional Record:
Your problem is not explication. Your problem is contradiction. Other participants in those same debates were equally explicit, yet contradicted the single argument you have cherry picked.
For some examples:
Quote:
“Every person born within the United States, its Territories, or districts, whether the parents are citizens or aliens, is a natural-born citizen of the United States in the sense of the Constitution…Natural-born subjects are such as are born within the dominions of the crown of England; that is, within the ligeance, or, as it is generally called, the allegiance of the King; and aliens are such as are born out of it.” …… “It makes a man a subject in England, and a citizen here, and is, as Blackstone declares, ‘founded in reason and the nature of government’ … The English Law made no distinction … in declaring that all persons born within its jurisdiction are natural-born subjects. This law bound the colonies before the revolution, and was not changed afterward.”
“As matter of law, does anybody deny here, or anywhere, that the native-born is a citizen, and a citizen by virtue of his birth alone ?”
Senator Morrill, Cong. Globe, 1st Sess. 39th Congress, pt. 1, pg. p. 570 (1866).
Quote:
“Mr. Thayer, of Pennsylvania, said that the bill was an enactment simply declaring that all men born upon the soil of the United States shall enjoy the fundamental rights of citizenship.”
Cong. Globe, 1st Sess. 39th Congress, pt. 1, p. 1151 (1866).
Quote:
“What is a citizen but a human being who, by reason of his being born within the jurisdiction of a government, owes allegiance to that government?”
And finally, Senator Trumbull again, speaking a few years later after the debates were settled and the laws passed and implemented:
Quote:
“By the terms of the Constitution he must have been a citizen of the United States for nine years before he could take a seat here, and seven years before he could take a seat in the other House ; and, in order to be President of the United States, a person must be a native-born citizen. It is the common law of this country, and of all countries, and it was unnecessary to incorporate it in the Constitution, that a person is a citizen of the country in which he is born….I read from Paschal’s Annotated Consitutution, note 274: “All persons born in the allegiance of the king are natural born subjects, and all persons born in the allegiance of the United States are natural born citizens. Birth and allegiance go together. Such is the rule of the common law, and it is the common law of this country as well as of England. There are two exceptions, and only two, to the universality of its application. The children of ambassadors are, in theory, born in the allegiance of the powers the ambassadors represent, and slaves, in legal contemplation, are property, and not persons.”
Sen. Trumbull (author or the Civil Rights Act of 1866), April 11, 1871, Cong. Globe. 1st Session, 42nd Congress, pt. 1, pg. 575 (1872)
Trumbull's opinion appears to have... evolved.
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