"Natural" is Superfluous if "Born Citizen" is Sufficient

"Natural" is Superfluous if "Born Citizen" is Sufficient

This post is modified with corrections from a similar post that was posted on Mario Apuzzo's blog on November 14, 2014 at 10:02 PM.

>> http://puzo1.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-constitution-rule-of-law-and.html?commentPage=16

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On November 14, 2014 at 5:35 pm on Cafe Con Lech Republicans (CafeConLecheRepublicans.com/is-ted-cruz-a-natural-born-citizen/#comment-48806 ), Mario Apuzzo responded to Slartibartfast, aka Kevin, Phd mathematician, with articulate common sense, again, about the original intent of "natural born Citizen" as implied by John Jay in his July 25, 1787 note to George Washington, which was incorrectly applied by the first Congress in 1790 in Washington's first administration, and was accurately corrected and applied by the third Congress in 1795 in Washington's second administration with (see item #7 below) James Madison ("father of the U.S. Constitution" in 1787 and fourth President) as a sitting Representative in the third Congress.

Slartibartfast*,

[...] you continuously speak about a natural born citizen being any citizen at birth. But you have yet to provide any historical or legal evidence that the Founders and Framers adopted such a definition. Actually, your theory is pretty ridiculous given that the Framers wrote “natural born citizen” into the Constitution.

Surely, they would not have had any need to use the word “natural” if all they required was a born citizen.

[...] Just repeating ... the Naturalization Act of 1790 provided that children born out of the United States to U.S. citizen parents “shall be considered as natural born citizens” does not help you.

You do not address these facts:

(1) the Constitution in matters of citizenship gives to Congress only the power to naturalize, which on its face does not include the power to make anyone a natural born citizen (Congress cannot make natural born children);

(2) The Naturalization Act of 1790 was just that, a naturalization act;

(3) the 1790 Act was passed after the Constitution was passed;

(4) the Act was only retroactive. It was passed to provide for children born out of the United States to U.S. citizen parents during the troubles of the American Revolution;

(5) the Constitution cannot be amended by statute, but rather by duly ratified constitutional amendment;

(6) the Act’s text only said that children born out of the United States to U.S. citizen parents “shall be considered as natural born citizens.” This is nothing more than naturalization language;

(7) then-Representative James Madison with the approval of George Washington removed “shall be considered as natural born citizens” and replaced it with “shall be considered as citizens of the United States” in the Naturalization Act of 1795.

You maintain that this alteration did not change the meaning of the Naturalization Act of 1790.

If the alteration did not produce any change in the 1790 Act, then do entertain us with your explanation on why the Third Congress and President Washington surgically removed “natural born citizen” from the 1790 Act and replaced it with “citizen of the United States” in the 1795 Act?;

(8) Congress never again used the clause “natural born citizens” in any of its naturalization Acts, including that which makes Senator Cruz a U.S. citizen; and

(9) Congress’s naturalization acts act upon, meaning they reach with its naturalizing power, persons born in all types of circumstances except those who are born in the United States to U.S. citizen parents. Hence these are the natural born citizens, for they need no naturalization.

As I have explained, the early naturalization acts (1790, 1795, 1802, and 1855) are incontrovertible evidence that a natural born citizen is a child born in the United States to parents who were its citizens at the time of the child’s birth.

By examining these acts and by a process of elimination, we can arrive at the conclusion that the only child or person Congress did not act or potentially act upon with its naturalization power was a child born in the United States to parents who were U.S. citizens at the time of the child’s birth.

As to the requirement to be born in the country, these acts were needed to naturalize as citizens alien born children born out of the United States (the 1790 Act said they “shall be considered as natural born citizens” and the 1795 Act repealed that language and said they “shall be considered as citizens of the United States”).

If children were born out of the United States to U.S. citizen parents, Congress was willing to give them grace and consider them as having been born as citizens.

If those foreign born children were not born to U.S. citizen parents, those children could become citizens only after their birth, either derivatively through their parents upon the parents’ naturalization or through their own naturalization petition filed by them after becoming adults.

The Acts also reveal that simply being born in the United States was also not sufficient to gain birthright citizenship.

The Acts treated children born in the United States to alien parents as alien born and in need of naturalization which at best would make them a citizen after birth.

So, it is evident the Acts were not needed to make one a citizen if that person was born in the United States to citizen parents.

That child did not need the naturalization Acts to gain any type of citizenship status, whether at birth or after birth, because that child was a natural born citizen.

I have repeatedly reminded you of these factors, but you simply ignore them and just repeat your same one-line nonsense.

I have yet to see you provide any explanation on why Madison removed “shall be considered as natural born citizens” (removed from the 1790 Act) and replace it with “shall be considered as citizens of the United States” (inserted in the 1795 Act). Why do you not entertain us with your explanation?

[…]

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My comment to Mario:

Kevin has never responded with what he thinks John Jay was implying by underlining the word "born" in "natural born Citizen" in his one and only note to George Washington in 1787 about the "Command in chief" of the military being reserved only for children born with singular U. S. Citizenship, not dual citizenship, only four years after Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and John Jay signed the Treaty of Paris with England in 1783.

1- Did Jay imply ONLY birth on U.S. soil to ONLY two U.S. citizen parents?

(Except for President # 21 Chester Alan Arthur and President # 44 Barack Hussein Obama, ALL of the other 42 U.S. Presidents have had two U.S. citizen married parents)

2- Did Jay imply ALSO birth on U.S. soil to ONLY one U.S. citizen parent?

(Sen. BHObama)

3- Did Jay imply ALSO birth on U.S. soil to ALSO zero U.S. citizen parents?

(Sen. Marco Rubio, Gov. Bobby Jindal, Gov. Nikki Haley)

4- Did Jay imply ALSO birth on foreign soil to ONLY two U.S. citizen parents?

(1790 Naturalization Act)

5- Did Jay imply ALSO birth on foreign soil to ALSO one U.S. citizen parents?

(Sen. Rafael Edward "Ted" Cruz)

6- Did Jay imply ALSO birth on foreign soil to ALSO zero U.S. citizen parents?

(Some people are advocating for foreign born children adopted by at least one U.S. citizen parent, heterosexual or homosexual, to be “...eligible to the Office of President...”)

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* See Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slartibartfast ) for the origin of the name Slaribartfast, a character in the book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -

"Douglas Adams writes in the notes accompanying the published volume of original radio scripts that he wanted Slartibartfast's name to sound very rude, but still actually be broadcastable. He therefore started with the name "Phartiphukborlz", and changed bits of it until it would be acceptable to the BBC."

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Art
U.S. Constitution
The Original "Birther" Document of the "Union"