Comments to Attorneys & Paralegals
01-26-12 Leo Donofrio:
You wrote; “It (my statement re natural citizens born abroad) fails to recognize that Congress only has powers over naturalization. Congress has no power to define “natural born Citizen. Furthermore, if Congress wants to tell the State Department something, they don’t have to enact legislation to do it.”
I find logic errors in both of these statements. Since natural citizens are what they are by nature regardless of where in the universe they are born, Congress did not in the 1790 Act define who they were because that was unnecessary since at that time everyone knew what they were. There was no definition given in the Act, only the statement that they were to be treated the same as their domestically born brethren (and not treated as aliens and required to obtain the proper papers that a foreigner would need, or barred altogether from entering the country at the whim of the immigration officers.)
The wording of that Act was directly aimed at the immigration service and no one else because it pertained to no one else. I can hardly believe that you’ve said that Congress can “tell” the executive branch what it wants by merely contacting any particular branch. They “tell” everyone what they want only by getting legislation passed by the legislative process and no other. They can issue subpenas but that’s unrelated.
Leo included this quote as evidence of his view:
“United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S., at 688 . Then follows a most significant sentence:
”But it [the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment] has not touched the acquisition of citizenship by being born abroad of American parents; and has left that subject to be regulated, as it had always been, by Congress, in the exercise of the power conferred by the Constitution to establish an uniform rule of naturalization.”
This mind-set contains more than one logic error. The 14th has no pertinence to citizens born abroad therefore it is a HUGE falsehood to claim that it has THEREFORE left that subject to be regulated. It also did not touch on a thousand other issues and therefore left them all to be regulated also? Ridiculous. Natural citizenship is not something that Congress has ever had the authority to regulate, even though it has erroneous assumed it. It only has authority to regulate the treatment of foreigners and their children, NOT Americans and their children. There is no such authority in the Constitution because natural citizenship is bestowed as an unalienable natural right just like Life, Liberty and and many others, including the right to marry and divorce, own and inherit property. The Bill of Rights was written to protect and declare rights undeclared in the body of the Constitution, and one of those undeclared rights is the inherited citizenship of children born to Americans without regard to where they are born.
I don’t see any conflation of native born and natural born in the 14th A because it contains no reference to nbc. It’s words describe both types of citizenship but was not written to address the nbc class, only the native born class. The nbc class needs no law or Amendment to secure its rights because they are a fundamental element of Natural Rights.
The 14th’s all-inclusive wording sacrificed clarity for brevity, and clarity was the big loser. “subject to the jurisdiction thereof”: undefined but not undefineable. Perhaps its definition seemed self-evident to the authors but others are afraid to read their logical minds. But I’m not. Foreigners are not subject to U.S. jursidiction, whether they are inside or outside of the U.S. Only citizens and legal immigrants are subject. Domiciled illegal immigrants could also be ruled to be subject, or not.
They did something unusual with the Amendments wording by throwing in “or naturalized” where it doesn’t really belong because its presense presents a meaning of “All persons naturalized in the United States are citizens of the United States” That would be a ridiculously obvious statement to deliberately make except for one thing, no law of Congress can change that stated fact. It would require a repeal or rewrite of the Amendment to change that.