Define "Natural Born Citizen"

Ok, I have been following this for a while and also wanted the Supreme Court to at least define "natural born citizen" as opposed to "nationalized citizen". Apparently there was already a case very similar to Obama where a girl, Marie Elg, was born in the US by Swedish parents who then went back to Sweden with her family but returned when she was an adult. They tried to deport her for being an alien but she took it to the Supreme Court and they 'declared Miss Elg 'to be a natural born citizen of the United States'

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=CASE&court=US&vol=307&page=325

They found that even if you or your parents renounce your citizenship as a minor, you do not have the ability to make that choice until you are an adult and can come back before you are 21 and have full citizenship if you so choose.
 
Zera said:
All my life, I have known natural born citizen to mean that you were born on U.S. soil. But now, it doesn't? I don't understand how one parent being born in the U.K. makes one a British subject, even if his mother was an American and he was born in America. Even our 21st president, Chester A. Arthur, had a father born in Ireland. Hell, there were even rumors that he himself was born in Canada, but they were apparently never sure.

I don't see how what I've known to be the definition of a natural born citizen all my life is suddenly different since Obama won.
Click to expand...

Maybe you've always just been wrong. There are two types of citizens - natural born and naturalized. Because McCain and Obama were citizens at birth, they are both natural born citizens.

If the child is born as a dual citizen it doesn't negate that he was naturally born an American.
 
angelatc said:
Maybe you've always just been wrong. There are two types of citizens - natural born and naturalized. Because McCain and Obama were citizens at birth, they are both natural born citizens.

If the child is born as a dual citizen it doesn't negate that he was naturally born an American.
Click to expand...

And out goes 800 years of legal history, because you said so :rolleyes:

Edit: you can only be a natural born citizen of one country, and the reason Obama had British citizenship at birth is because he was a natural born British citizen and its the same legal principle for natural born that we are using!.

Dual natural born citizenship - not dual citizenship, would be like being born by two different mothers at the same time.
 
Last edited:
Bruno said:
Bill Richardson calling Barack Obama an immigrant

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=83114
Click to expand...

I also don't believe that Obama was born in Hawaii either. But its enough to know that he was a natural born British citizen through his father. Eventually, his birth certificate will come out, if not through the civil trials, through the criminal cases.

To tell you the truth, considering the nature of the mother, I also wonder if she renounced her citizenship. Something no one has looked into.
 
angelatc said:
Maybe you've always just been wrong. There are two types of citizens - natural born and naturalized. Because McCain and Obama were citizens at birth, they are both natural born citizens.

If the child is born as a dual citizen it doesn't negate that he was naturally born an American.
Click to expand...
If he was born a Kenyan it does.<IMHO> This dual crap unnecessary and bogus complication is merely another BS smokescreen. :p :rolleyes:
 
BeFranklin said:
To tell you the truth, considering the nature of the mother, I also wonder if she renounced her citizenship. Something no one has looked into.
Click to expand...

Hmm, yeah.

An idea I've had about the original is that it might list no father, which would be interesting. It would get around the 'dual citizenship at birth' issue, but not without ignoring other information.
 
Washington Times coverage

THE WASHINGTON TIMES COVERAGE OF DONOFRIO AND WROTNOWSKI SCOTUS CASES
Posted in Uncategorized on December 10, 2008 by naturalborncitizen

Tom Ramstack of The Washington Times has made consistent attempts to report accurately on the SCOTUS cases - Donofrio v. NJ Secretary of State and Wrotnowski v. Connecticut Secretary of State. Of all the main stream media coverage, Ramstack’s has been the most accurate.

But there are a couple of things I need to clarify about his last two reports from a purely legal standpoint. The issues involved in these cases are not easy to report accurately. Most of the reporters are not lawyers and if not a lawyer they are truly at a disadvantage and must really strive to lock down understanding of each key phrase as whole worlds of meaning change on even tiny discrepancies.

This today on Cort’s case:

On the same day the Supreme Court declined to hear one appeal challenging Barack Obama’s right to become president because of questions about his citizenship, Justice Antonin Scalia distributed another appeal on the same issue for the court to consider.

The new case, Cort Wrotnowski v. Susan Bysiewicz, Connecticut Secretary of State, is scheduled to be discussed by the justices at their Dec. 12 private conference. They plan to decide whether to give the case a hearing - again on whether the British citizenship of Mr. Obama’s father makes the president-elect ineligible to assume the office…

Mr. Donofrio helped Mr. Wrotnowski prepare his Supreme Court appeal.

“Cort’s application before [the Supreme Court] incorporates all of the arguments and law in mine, but we improved on the arguments in Cort’s quite a bit as we had more time to prepare it,” Mr. Donofrio said on his blog.

The report should have stressed that, according to Obama, his birth status as a British citizen was “governed” (Obama’s Fight The Smears’ choice of words) by Great Britain in that Obama was a British citizen at the time of his birth, not just his father.

Ramstack also reports:

Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District’s nonvoting Democratic delegate to Congress, speculated that the Supreme Court is considering appeals that challenge Mr. Obama’s citizenship only long enough to reject them “and lay to rest manufactured doubts about the legitimacy of Obama’s election before the inauguration.”

That’s a rather absurd statement. Frivolous cases aren’t graced with any respect at all. If it deserves immediate denial, then they deny it. But on the same day the order came down rejecting my case, Justice Scalia referred Wrotnowski v. Bysiewicz to the full Court and it was distributed for the Dec. 12 conference.

If the Court wanted to send a message as Norton suggests, they could have denied Cort’s case at the same time as mine. Now that would have sent the message she suggests.

For example, when a stay application is renewed to a second Justice, that Justice may deny it straight away rather than referring it to the full Court. Examine the following two SCOTUS dockets where stay applications were denied by the first Justice and then denied by the second Justice upon renewed application:
No. 07A638
Title:
Ate Kays Company, Applicant
v.
Pennsylvania Department of General Services, et al.
Docketed:
Lower Ct: Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, Eastern District
Case Nos.: (175 EM 2007)
~~~Date~~~ ~~~~~~~Proceedings and Orders~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Feb 1 2008 Application (07A638) for a stay pending appeal, submitted to Justice Souter.
Feb 2 2008 Application (07A638) denied by Justice Souter.
Feb 6 2008 Application (07A638) refiled and submitted to Justice Scalia.
Feb 7 2008 Application (07A638) denied by Justice Scalia.

—————

No. 7A421

Michigan, Applicant
v.
Corey Ramone Frazier
Docketed:
Lower Ct: Supreme Court of Michigan
Case Nos.: (131041)

Nov 20 2007 Application (07A421) for stay pending disposition of the petition for a writ of certiorari, submitted to Justice Stevens.
Nov 20 2007 Application (07A421) denied by Justice Stevens.
Nov 28 2007 Application (07A421) refiled and submitted to Justice Alito.
Nov 28 2007 Application (07A421) denied by Justice Alito.






Now let’s take a look at Ramstack’s December 9, 2008 report:

Leo C. Donofrio, a New Jersey lawyer who filed the case, argued that Mr. Obama had British citizenship when he was born, thus disqualifying him from being president under the Constitution’s requirement of being a “natural-born citizen.”

“My case is done,” he said. “I’m perfectly comfortable with their decision.”

Preventing Mr. Obama from becoming president was less of a consideration for him than ensuring constitutional law is followed, he said.

“I’m not worried about Barack Obama, I’m worried about the precedent of law,” Mr. Donofrio said. “This sets a precedent for someone who doesn’t have a tie to this country” to become president…

Fair coverage again. But it appears as if I intended to imply that Obama had no tie to this country. I didn’t mean that. And to Mr. Ramstack’s credit, we did discuss this exact quote. I told him people might mis-understand. He was confident otherwise. And I let it go because I felt like I might be bullying him in that I parsed over multiple statements in his original draft of the story when he called me to verify the statements before going to print. I was deeply gratified that he took the time and effort to make sure the story was accurate.

But reading that statement in print has confirmed my fears. It is confusing.

I meant to convey that a person - born to a father who is an alien and who remains an alien not residing here - would probably have a tie to whatever country his father is from. For example, as to Obama, in 1963 his British citizenship transferred to Kenya, and while he may have dropped his dual national status at the age of 21, the influence of that country and his tie thereto are self evident.

I take personal responsibility for any confusion on this issue. I should have been more vigilant.

This is why it’s so difficult for news reports to accurately convey legal issues. Every word is so important. I cannot stress that enough.

[Watch for blog post #2 today regarding an update on the Chester Arthur story.]

25 Comments »
 
re: chester arthur

Zera said:
All my life, I have known natural born citizen to mean that you were born on U.S. soil. But now, it doesn't? I don't understand how one parent being born in the U.K. makes one a British subject, even if his mother was an American and he was born in America. Even our 21st president, Chester A. Arthur, had a father born in Ireland. Hell, there were even rumors that he himself was born in Canada, but they were apparently never sure.

I don't see how what I've known to be the definition of a natural born citizen all my life is suddenly different since Obama won.
Click to expand...


http://naturalborncitizen.wordpress.com/

HISTORICAL BREAKTHROUGH - PROOF: CHESTER ARTHUR CONCEALED HE WAS A BRITISH SUBJECT AT BIRTH

Posted in Uncategorized on December 6, 2008 by naturalborncitizen December 6, 2008 6:36 PM
[I have collaborated on this with my sister and historian Greg Dehler, author of "Chester Allan Arthur", Published by Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2006 ISBN 1600210791, 9781600210792 192 pages. ]
I’ve been forwarded the actual naturalization record for William Arthur on microfiche, obtained from the Library of Congress. He was naturalized in New York State and became a United States citizen in August 1843.
Chester Arthur perpetrated a fraud as to his eligibility to be Vice President by spreading various lies about his parents’ heritage. President Arthur’s father, William Arthur, became a United States citizen in August 1843. But Chester Arthur was born in 1829. Therefore, he was a British Citizen by descent, and a dual citizen at birth, if not his whole life.
He wasn’t a “natural born citizen” and he knew it.
We’ve also uncovered many lies told by Chester Arthur to the press which kept this fact from public view when he ran for Vice President in 1880. Garfield won the election, became President in 1881, and was assassinated by a fanatical Chester Arthur supporter that same year.
How ironic that the allegations started by Arthur Hinman in his pamphlet entitled, “How A British Subject Became President”, have turned out to be true…but not for the reason Hinman suggested.
Hinman alleged that Arthur was born in Ireland or Canada as a British subject. It was bunk. It’s been definitively established that Chester Arthur was born in Vermont. But Hinman turns out to be correct anyway since Chester Arthur was a British citizen/subject by virtue of his father not having naturalized as a United States citizen until Chester Arthur was almost 14 years old.
That means Chester Arthur was a British subject at the time of his birth.
We’ve uncovered news clips exposing a thorough trail of lies, all of which served to obscure Chester Arthur’s true history of having been born as a British citizen.
Chester Arthur’s lies came during his Vice Presidential campaign in 1880. His fraudulent attempt to obfuscate family history provides context and evidence that in 1880 it was recognized that having been born as a British citizen would make one ineligible to be President or VP. His falsification of family history indicates he was aware of POTUS ineligibility.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Chester Arthur was in politics at the time of the 14th Amendment’s ratification. He was a lawyer and a politician while the 14th Amendment was being debated. It was ratified in 1867. In that same year Chester Arthur rose to become chairperson of the Executive Committee of the State Republican Committee. He would have been fully cognizant of the natural born citizen issue and that should he ever run for POTUS or VP, problems could arise.
He would have known that if anybody found out his father naturalized after he was born, he could never be President or Vice President.
CHESTER’S LIES
The definitive biography on Chester Arthur is “Gentleman Boss” by Thomas Reeves. It’s an exhaustive reference. Many of the blanks in Chester Arthur’s legend were filled in by this book which utilized interviews with family members and authentic documents like the Arthur family Bible. It was a necessary work since old Chester Arthur was a very wily protector of his strange history. He burned all of his papers. (See page 2365.)
“Gentleman Boss” establishes, on page 4, that Chester Arthur’s father William was born in Ireland, 1796, and emigrated to Canada in 1818 or 1819. His mother Malvina was born in Vermont and his parents eloped in Canada in 1821. They had their first child, Regina, in Dunham, Canada on March 8, 1822.
By no later than 1824, the Arthur family had moved to Burlington, Vermont. Their second child Jane was born there on March 14, 1824. Chester Arthur was their fifth child, and he was born on October 5, 1829. Reeves established these facts (and the correct date of Chester Arthur’s birth) from the Arthur family Bible.
From “Gentleman Boss”, page 202 and 203:
“…Hinman was hired, apparently by democrats, to explore rumors that Arthur had been born in a foreign country, was not a natural-born citizen of the United States, and was thus, by the Constitution, ineligible for the vice-presidency. By mid-August, Hinman was claiming that Arthur was born in Ireland and had been brought to the United States by his father when he was fourteen. Arthur denied the charge and said that his mother was a New Englander who had never left her native country — a statement every member of the Arthur family knew was untrue.”
Arthur’s mother had lived in Canada with her husband and even had her first child there.
In the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper, an article interviewing Chester Arthur about Hinman’s accusations was published on August 13, 1880. In that article, Chester Arthur defended himself as follows:
“My father, the late Rev. William Arthur, D.D., was of Scotch blood, and was a native of the North of Ireland. He came to this country when he was eighteen years of age, and resided here several years before he was married.”
This was another blatant lie. His father emigrated from Ireland to Canada at the age of 22 or 23. William Arthur didn’t come to the United States until sometime between March 1822 - when his first child was born in Dunham, Canada - and March 1824 - when his second child was born in Burlington, Vermont. The youngest he could have been when he came to Vermont was 26.
On August 16, 1880 Chester Arthur told the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper that at the time of his birth, his father was forty years old. Another blatant lie. His father would have been only thirty-three years old when Chester was born.
In that same article he lied that his father settled in Vermont and reiterated the lie that William came here at the age of eighteen. This age discrepancy was exposed in the August 19, 1880 edition of the Brooklyn Eagle in an article written by Hinman .
It was very convenient for Arthur that Hinman kept the focus on the extraordinary and false claim - that Arthur was born abroad - while the more subtle and true eligibility issue stayed hidden in plain site.
FATEFUL FACTS
I contacted Greg Dehler a few days ago after finding a reference in his Chester Arthur biography which said William Arthur became a citizen in 1843. I wrote to Greg and asked him about the reference. As fate would have it, Mr. Dehler, after checking his notes, wrote back to me to say that he got it from Thomas Reeves’ book, “Gentleman Boss”.
I went to the library the next day and devoured the Reeves book. But the reference to William’s naturalization was not there. Greg also knew I was interested in the Hinman scandal and pointed me to the Brooklyn Eagle search engine from the Brooklyn public library.
I began poking around and discovered a few of the lies mentioned above.
Earlier today I was telling my sister that this matter of Chester Arthur having falsified his parents’ personal history might lead to a very important revision of history. I suggested we put together an outline of a book as we might be able to prove that Chester Arthur was a fraudulent President and that would be quite a story. My sister thought I was jumping the gun a bit in that we really needed to define when William Arthur was naturalized before we could get excited.
About an hour later I received an email from Greg Dehler. I’ll let you read it:
Leo,
Needless to say I was more than a little embarrassed that you could not locate the reference in Reeves. I thought that was odd because my note concerning William Arthur was with the Reeves notes. I conducted a more thorough search and found the source. It was in the Chester A. Arthur Papers (what is left of them at least) at the LOC. I own the microfilm reels and made a copy for you which is attached. The Washington County Clerk in NYS dates it August 31, 1843. How does this affect Chet?
Greg
I almost fell off my chair when I downloaded the William Arthur naturalization PDF and was staring at the shifting sands of history.
Chester Arthur had something to hide.
He had all of his papers burned which was very odd for a President.
Arthur lied about his mother’s time in Canada. He lied about his father’s time in Canada. He lied about his father’s age plus where and when he got off the boat from Ireland. By obscuring his parents’ personal history he curtailed the possibility that anybody might discover he was born many years before his father had naturalized.
When Chester runs for VP, Hinman comes along essentially demanding to see Chester’s birth certificate to prove he was born in the United States. This causes a minor scandal easily thwarted by Chester, because Chester was born in Vermont…but at the same time, the fake scandal provides cover for the real scandal.
Is this the twilight zone?
William Arthur was not a naturalized citizen at the time of Chester Arthur’s birth, and therefore Chester Arthur was a British subject at birth and not eligible to be Vice President or President.
Chester Arthur lied about his father’s emigration to Canada and the time his mother spent there married to William. Some sixty years later, Chester lied about all of this and kept his candidacy on track. Back then it would have been virtually impossible to see through this, especially since Arthur’s father had died in 1875 and had been a United States citizen for thirty-two years.
And without knowledge of his father’s time in Canada, or the proper timeline of events, potential researchers in 1880 would have been hard pressed to even know where to start.
Reeves proved that Arthur changed his birth year from 1829 to 1830. I don’t know if that would have protected recorded information. It’s another lie. I just don’t know what it means.
Because Chester Arthur covered up his British citizenship, any precedent he might have set that the country has had a President born of an alien father is nullified completely as Chester Arthur was a usurper to the Presidency. He wouldn’t have been on the ticket if it was public knowledge. Nobody knew Arthur was a British subject because nobody looked in the right place for the truth.
And it’s no precedent to follow.




after these findings leo & cort added a supplement to their case & brought it to SCOTUS ...it has now been distributed as well.


http://origin.www.supremecourtus.gov/docket/08a469.htm



Dec 9 2008 Supplemental brief of applicant Cort Wrotnowski filed. (Distributed)
 
angelatc said:
Maybe you've always just been wrong. There are two types of citizens - natural born and naturalized. Because McCain and Obama were citizens at birth, they are both natural born citizens.

If the child is born as a dual citizen it doesn't negate that he was naturally born an American.
Click to expand...


you may need to do some more research;) being a citizen at birth & being a natural born citizen are 2 completely different entities.

i would suggest reading leo donofrio's blog...he sums it up in an easy manner:

here is a snippet:

The main argument of my law suit alleges that since Obama was a British citizen - at birth - a fact he admits is true, then he cannot be a “natural born citizen”. The word “born” has meaning. It deals with the status of a presidential candidate “at birth”. Obama had dual nationality at birth. The status of the candidate at the time of the election is not as relevant to the provisions of the Constitution as is his status “at birth.” If one is not “born” a natural born citizen, he can never be a natural born citizen.

and this:

But the Constitution draws a direct distinction between “Citizens” and “Natural Born Citizens”. Citizens may be Senators and Representatives, but it takes something else to be President.


the distinction for POTUS is that he MUST be natural born citizen. the founders did this for a reason. remember they grandfathered themselves in so they could run for POTUS. ...& barky is not old enough to qualify for their grandfather clause ;)
 
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