Ted Cruz is a dangerous man. He is probably the GOP's best candidate for president in 2016, since they have no good candidates. He went to Harvard Law School. He is wicked smart, and evil. Our own Adam B said he debated Cruz and got his clock cleaned.
Today Cruz released his Canadian birth certificate. Idiots like Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, who is consistently wrong on issues of U.S. immigration law (and never admits an error), declared that this disposes of the issue, proving that Cruz is a "natural born" citizen and therefore eligible to be president under the U.S. Constitution. See http://editors.talkingpointsmemo.com/... .
That's absolutely false. And as an immigration lawyer with more than 25 years of experience, I can prove it. But at the moment I can't even find an email address for Marshall to try to refute him directly. In the past, he's ignored everything I've sent him.
This issue has been burning me up today, because I've seen many, many posters shoot their mouths off with their "opinions" and "certainties" when they're plainly black & white wrong and have no evidence whatsoever.
This reminds me of my old rule that when reading newspaper stories, the number of errors one detects is, of course, is in direct proportion to how much one knows about the actual facts, reporters in general, like bloggers, generally being kind of stupid and ignorant--but defiant about what they think they know!
The bottom line is that Cruz's birth certificate proves NOTHING about whether he is eligible to be president! And anybody who says otherwise is ignorant and/or lying.
In contrast, Obama's birth certificate PROVES that he is eligible to be president, since it shows he was born in the United States.
I've been trying to correct the record on this rather actively all day, and I'm absolutely dismayed that the stupid and ignorant posts consistently get 4 or 5 times as many recs as the truthful ones (not just from me). That shows, once again, that this really isn't much of a "reality community." And almost NOBODY is willing to admit an error. Good grief. Bad showing today on this from almost everybody, with some good exceptions.
Most annoying to me is that some very annoying members, especially good old Walt starr, have been repeatedly accusing me of being a "birther" because I want to focus attention on the actual law! It's infuriating.
So what is the actual law?
The U.S. Constitution says that to be eligible to be president a person must be a "natural born" citizen. Trust me, nobody knows exactly what that means. People cite to the Immigration Act of 1790, and a couple of old Supreme Court cases. But none of that clearly lays down the law.
The U.S. Congress, under the Constitution, has "plenary power" (which means COMPLETE power) to decide on such issues, so they could nail this down, but they have not.
I read about this quite a bit during the controversies over McCain's status as a natural born citizen. I think he was NOT eligible to be president (and most legal scholars agree with me). In contrast, I thought it was obvious that Obama WAS eligible to be president, since he was born in the United States--but if he had been born outside the United States he would NOT have been eligible, since his mother was too young under the nationality statute in effect at that time.
Most legal scholars, including me, think that at a minimum a person must have become a U.S. citizen at birth, automatically, in order to be considered a "natural born" citizen eligible to be president.
The nationality laws are complicated, and have changed many times. They are very "legalistic," in the sense that it's clear from the facts whether one meets the requirements or not. There is no room for discretion or for a waiver, etc.
Thus, depending on one's year of birth outside the United States, and other facts concerning one's parents, it's black and white that one either is or is not a U.S. citizen automatically at birth (and thus not required to apply for citizenship, apply for papers, go through naturalization, etc.).
Here are the nationality rules (under the Immigration and Nationality Act, which is part of Title 8 of the U.S. Code) that were in effect in 1970 when Ted Cruz were born concerning persons born outside the United States:
For persons born between December 24, 1952 and November 14, 1986, a person is a U.S. citizen if all of the following are true:
The person's parents were married at the time of birth
One of the person's parents was a U.S. citizen when the person was born
The citizen parent lived at least ten years in the United States before the child's birth;
A minimum of 5 of these 10 years in the United States were after the citizen parent's 14th birthday.
Therefore, NONE OF US KNOW whether Cruz was a U.S. citizen at birth, and even if he was, it's not crystal clear that he is eligible for the presidency. Among other reasons, he is a dual citizen of the United States and Canada, which raises novel questions not considered in the Constitution or the immigration laws.
Therefore, it is CLEAR (black & white, no gray area) that we DON'T know whether he was a U.S. citizen at birth unless we know more facts about the age of his mother at the date of his birth; her duration of residency in the United States; and how many years she resided in the United States after year 14.
THAT'S THE LAW. It's not my opinion.
If I have an idiot call me a birther again, I'm going to do something drastic, like maybe writing a complaint email to admin.
Get a grip, people. Pay attention to the truth.
Finally, since we don't know the facts, I have no clue whatsoever whether Cruz is legally eligible to be president--and no Kossack knows better.
EDIT: I'm guessing this diary got a bad response because nobody wants to stand up in favor of a criticism of Josh Marshall. Pathetic.