Omnibus Politics Thread: Campaign 2016 EditionFollow

I don't know that I agree with that. As people are FAR more mobile now than when the Constitution was written, I think it's sensible to come to grips with what a natural born citizen really is.

I agree that the citizenship of one's parents trumps (no pun intended) the location of one's birth, even though I would love for Cruz to be disqualified just because I despise the man. But as long as it remains an open question we'll have more and more of these sorts of crazy birther debates, and I'm tired of them.

It *should* have come up when he ran for Senate, no? Particularly since he still had dual citizenship at that point.

Quick, what's Rand Paul up to these days?

They'll always have a niche. After listening to nearly two years of political rhetoric and overly-rehashed ideas from the two major parties during the campaign season harshly reducing the size of government starts to sound like a reasonable idea.

But if understanding of and ability to interact with the majority culture of the society you live in does act as an indicator of success, then isn't this a valid measurement? Let's set aside trying to determine "intelligence", but just look at it as "how well will you likely do in the society you live in", isn't it legitimate? Shouldn't we be striving for kids who do poorly on those sorts of tests to try to learn how to do better? Fair or not, if the majority of the business owners expect certain things of their employees, and one set of kids are being taught those things and another set are being taught something different, should we be surprised that this will result in different outcomes for those two sets?

It would be like a group of people who believe it's culturally acceptable to spit in other people's food, living in a culture where most people think that's a terrible thing to do, insisting that it's unfair that they can't get jobs in the food handling industry. Um... yeah. I get the whole diversity thing, but at the point that what you are being diverse over is actually hurting you, maybe it's time to let that go?


I do get the point about wealth being passed along and developing over time, but isn't the better response to work to build that wealth yourself? It seems like the primary response to such a revelation of unequal wealth is to take the wealth from the other groups, but that just seem self destructive. Unless you goal is to make everyone poor. And yes, here's where I will also repeat my point that welfare programs are one of the biggest factors in preventing those who are currently poor from every accumulating wealth they can hand to their children. That's the generational poverty I've spoken about before. If you want to know what's preventing black people from being able to catch up, it's welfare. Get rid of it, and in a few generations, things will even out.

This was brought up, and responded to, many many times. The issue is that according to immigration law, there are three methods by which one can pass natural born citizenship to a child:

1. If the child is born in the US, or a US territory (this is McCain, since the Panama territory was considered US territory at the time).

If not born in the US, then either of these two still grant natural born citizenship:

2. If both parents are US citizens (this is also McCain).

3. If only one parent is a US citizen but has resided within the US as a citizen for some number of years past the age of 15 (I think, can't remember the details since I last looked this up). This is the issue that affected both Obama and potentially Cruz.


The point with Obama was that his mother was very young when she gave birth. Too young to meet the requirement under 3. And he didn't meet the criteria under 2. Thus, if there was any question at all about whether he was born in the US or outside the US, that became a determining factor.

Cruz, even if not born in the US, and even if not born to two citizens, had a mother who was born in 1934 (in Delaware), while he was born in 1970. She moved with her Cuban husband to work in Canada in 1969. Ted was born in 1970. So she lived the first 35 years of her life in the US, clearly long enough to pass natural born citizenship on to Ted.

It's a complete non-issue, raised by someone who doesn't actually understand (or hasn't bothered to read) the laws in question. There was a legitimate question about Obama since there was a suspicious absence of a long form birth certificate which contained clear data about exactly where was born, and there did exist in the state of Hawaii a process for certification of birth after the fact by merely filling out a form. A process which was well known to be used as a loophole for people to gain citizenship without actually having been born in the state. Once that long form was provided, clearly showing which hospital he was born in, complete with doctor/nurse signatures, that question was resolved (except for a small number of nutters).

Ted Cruz's questions don't even meet that level of speculation. We have a long form birth certificate for his mother, clearly establishing her as a natural born citizen of the US. We have documentation of how long she lived in the US prior to moving to Canada, clearly establishing her ability to pass that natural born citizenship on to her child, no matter where he was born. And, just in case one's still going with the "but he was raised in a foreign country" bit (which isn't legitimate anyway), the family moved back to Houston in 1975, when Ted was like 4 or 5. It's hard to argue that his most formative years (years spent in school) were spent in the US. If one accepts that this wasn't a problem for Obama, who spent the first 10 years of his life living in a foreign country, then it kinda can't be an issue at all for Cruz.

Edited, Feb 19th 2016 4:42pm by gbaji

Same counter argument as applied to Obama. Natural born citizenship is not required to be a Senator (or a governor, as California should clearly indicate). The natural born citizenship requirement applies *only* to qualifying to be President of the US. No other position requires this, so no test for this would ever have to be made or considered. Saying "he was a Senator, thus must qualify to be president" isn't a true statement.

Well, no, it isn't. Not even remotely.

You're correct though that I don't like the argument. I also don't like the argument that aliens built the pyramids or the argument that the WTC was downed by internal thermite explosives. I generally don't like arguments which are nonsense.

Edited, Feb 19th 2016 5:37pm by Jophiel

Neither are those of us who merely thought there was a legitimate need to see the long firm birth certificate to make sure that condition 1 was met. I'm sorry, was there an actual question about whom I consider to be a nutter?

True, you were more in the "Stop the scary president" camp and wouldn't see the value in saying the same Birther nonsense for a Republican president.

No. In both cases, I'm looking at the exact same laws and applying them in the exact same way. Maybe you should check your own bias here first.

Yeah, my bias that both suits are silly. If Cruz wins and I start proclaiming that this will be in the Supreme Court by October, remind me of this post.