Money quote(s):
"Once again, in questions posed to candidate Rick Perry, the issue of whether or not President Barack Obama is a "natural born citizen" has surfaced. It strikes me that the birther movement, our conservative answer to the truthers, has gone out of control and has derailed many.
I have said before that to prove that President Obama is not a "natural-born citizen" would require proof that his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was not a US citizen with eligibility to transmit citizenship, even if, by some hook or crook, it could be proven, as Obama's grandmother claimed,that Barack Obama, Jr. was indeed born in Mombassa, Kenya. Never, to my knowledge, has the birther movement offered statutory or case law proof that "natural-born" means anything other than being born a US citizen by either jus soli or jus sanguinis." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)
Mrs. Barack H. Obama, Sr. (née Dunham) was a U.S. citizen, which no one (to my necessarily incomplete knowledge) disputes.
However, Uncle Cephas' knowledge of current U.S. nationality law does not take into account what the requirements necessary to transmit U.S. citizenship as the law existed prior to amendment in 1986.
And since Pres. Obama was born some decades prior to 1986, this puts the hypothetical question into a different perspective.
"Wong Kim Ark (the Hoisan Yue pronunciation of Huang Jinde) was born in San Francisco, Chalifornia, to Chinese parents who were not naturalized as US citizens. His return to the US after a youthful visit to China was not questioned, even after passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, due to his birth in the USA. However, in 1895, after returning from another trip to China, he was detained at San Francisco due to the fact that his parents remained subject to the Emperor of China, and were not citizens at the time of Wong's birth in the 1870's. Wong therefore sued for habeas corpus.
His case ultimately reached the US Supreme Court, which, in 1898, ruled in a 6-2 decision that Wong was indeed a US citizen. It was observed that his parents had been involved in commerce rather than official business on behalf of the emperor of China; that they were legally in the USA during the 1870's; they were subject to the jurisdiction of US law (the language of the 14th Amendment); they clearly were not connected to a hostile occupying power in wartime; and that they were clearly not of a recognized Indian tribe (then theoretically their own jurisdictions and separate "nations" rather than officially part of the USA). Wong's citizenship later became the basis for allowing three of his own sons born in China whose relationships could not be questioned to enter the US during the period of Chinese Exclusion (in those days, many Overseas Chinese maintained wives in their ancestral places in China, and only occasionally visited)." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)
This was a very nice two-paragraph summary of the Ark case, which had an extremely determinative impact on the subsequent interpretation and implementation of U.S. nationality law.
"(T)he USA, as an independent power, had the right to establish its own rules for citizenship."
Yer darn tootin'!
This is something I've had to explain more than once, usually in conversation with those who think that the actions of Pres. Obama's Indonesian step-father, Mr. Soetoro, somehow tainted or obviated the president's standing as a U.S. citizen.
Repeat after me:
Other countries don't get to tell us who our citizens are.
Obama's step-father, no matter what his actions, had no legal right under U.S. law to do anything which would have altered the citizenship status of his American citizen minor child step-son in the slightest sense.
"The Wong case has long been understood to ensure the jus soli citizenship of children of legal immigrants or other foreign parents not in diplomatic or visiting head of state status (the children of foreign students, for example). Indeed, in view of the language of the 14th Amendment, which defines those born in the USA and under the jurisdiction thereof, it is very hard to justify the denial of citizenship to such persons.
The issue of whether the Wong decision allows the US-born children of those illegally in the USA to be counted as citizens has been disputed in legal journals. However, until now, it does not seem that the citizenship of US-born children of illegal immigrants has been challenged either by statute or case law." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)
There's a case, at least politically if not judicially, to made that illegal aliens, as unlawful invaders intent on evading U.S. law in most respects (except where it is to their benefit), aren't really under U.S. jurisdiction in a way meaningful enough that their U.S.-born children deserve American citizenship.
(It might fly, or it might not.)
"As for our president, it seems that as the US-born child of a US citizen parent (Stanley Ann Dunham), Barack Obama's citizenship cannot be questioned; and it is unlikely that anyone would be ready to deny citizenship to countless out-of-wedlock children sired by visiting foreigners (tourists, students, etc.) and born to US citizen mothers. Further, given that the requirements for jus sanguinis citizenship to children born abroad to US citizen parents (the citizen parent needs to have been resident in the USA for five years, two of which have to have been over the age of fourteen years) would have guaranteed Obama citizenship even if Stanley Ann Dunham had given birth to him on a trip to Kenya." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)
See above.
Under INA Title III "Nationality and Naturalization," Sec. 301g (8 U.S.C. 1401), which applies to persons "born outside the geographical limits of the United States and its outlying possessions of parents one of whom is an alien, and the other a citizen of the United States" the U.S. parent had to have completed a "required period of United States residence" of ten years, at least five of "which were after attaining the age of fourteen years."
The problem with the Dunham/Obama hypothetical is that the former-Miss Dunham was not yet nineteen years old when Pres. Obama was born, so that it's mathematically impossible for her to have resided anywhere for five years after her fourteenth birthday.
10/28
