President James Monroe and the “Natural Born Citizen” Clause
By Mario Apuzzo, Esq.
April 28, 2012
I received an email today regarding our fifth President, James Monroe. What struck me as being applicable today was the article that was attached to the email. The article was a little biography on President Monroe. In that article is contained a part that included President Monroe’s concern about possible usurpation in our government. Below is my reflection on this article.
Indeed, President James Monroe, in his First Inaugural Address of March 4, 1817, warned:
"What raised us to the present happy state?...The Government has been in the hands of the people. To the people, therefore...is the credit due...
It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising the sovereignty.
Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and an usurper soon found. The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin...
President Monroe then stated on December 7, 1824, in his 8th Annual Message:
"For these blessings we owe to Almighty God...with profound reverence, our most grateful and unceasing acknowledgments....
Having commenced my service in early youth, and continued it since with few and short intervals, I have witnessed the great difficulties to which our Union has been exposed, and admired the virtue and intelligence with which they have been surmounted...
That these blessings may be preserved and perpetuated will be the object of my fervent and unceasing prayers to the Supreme Ruler of the Universe."
Source: Monroe, James. Dec. 2, 1817, First Annual Message. James D. Richardson (U.S. Representative from Tennessee), ed., A Compilation of the Messages & Papers of the Presidents 1789-1897, 10 vols. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, published by Authority of Congress, 1897, 1899; Washington, D.C.: Bureau of National Literature & Art, 1789-1902, 11 vols., 1907, 1910), Vol. II, p. 12, as found at http://www.americanminute.com/ .
President Monroe was most dedicated to preserving the great nation that the United States had become. He saw usurpation as a most serious threat to that preservation.
Why was President Monroe so concerned about usurpation? To whom could Monroe have been referring when he spoke about “an usurper?” How could such a person become “an usurper?” Actually, Monroe answered this question by telling us that it was when the people became “ignorant and corrupt” that an usurper will come to power which in the end would produce the “debasement and ruin” of those same people.
What would make some political leader “an usurper” in the eyes of President Monroe? If it was the President and Commander in Chief of the Military that concerned Monroe, was it lack of being at least 35 years of age, of having at least 14 years of residency in the United States, or not being a "natural born Citizen" (the Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 eligibility requirements) that so worried him? Who else other than the President could be so important and powerful in our government to give Monroe such concern about “an usurper?” Given the structure and balance of power in our government, it could only have been the President to whom Monroe was referring. And would Monroe be so concerned about age and residency or was it lack of being a "natural born citizen" that so worried him? After all, is it not from being a “natural born Citizen” that sole allegiance to and love of only one country from birth come from? Such love and attachment to only one country from birth would surely have been something that Monroe thought was needed for the well-being, happiness, and preservation of the United States.
This concern by Monroe makes the point about how important it is for us as a nation to assure that the “natural born Citizen” clause is not only honored and protected today, but preserved for the well-being and happiness of future American generations. But for this to occur, the nation must make sure that ill-informed or corrupt people do not allow such an usurpation to occur or to continue.
Our current putative President, Barack Obama, does not meet the constitutional definition of an Article II “natural born Citizen.” That definition is a child born in the United States to two parents who at the time of the child’s birth were both either “citizens of the United States” or “natural born Citizens.” Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1875) ("all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners"); United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898) (acknowledging and confirming Minor’s American common law definition of a “natural-born citizens” but adding based on the English common law that “‘[t]he child of an alien, if born in the country, is as much a citizen as the natural-born child of a citizen, and by operation of the same principle [birth in the country]’” (bracketed information supplied)). This American common law definition of a “natural born Citizen” has never been changed, not even by the Fourteenth Amendment, and therefore still prevails today.
When Obama was born, wherever that may be, he was born to a father, Barack Obama Sr., who was a British citizen, and to a mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, who was a “natural born Citizen.” Under both U.S. and British statutory and U.S. common law existing from the time the Constitution was adopted and to the present, Obama was born an English “natural born subject.” Being born an English “natural born subject,” the Founders and Framers and our early Congresses, as they expressed in the Naturalization Acts of 1790, 1795, 1802, and 1855, would not even have considered him to be a “citizen,” let alone an Article II “natural born Citizen.” If he was born in the United States, a fact that he has yet to conclusively show, he can be a “citizen” under the Fourteenth Amendment and 8 U.S.C. Sec. 1401(a), which as interpreted by U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, granted constitutional birthright citizenship to persons born in the United States to one or two domiciled alien parents, just like a person can be a “citizen” under Congressional Acts which grant statutory birthright citizenship to persons born out of the United States to one or two U.S. citizen parents. But not being born to two U.S. citizen parents, Obama is not and can never be an Article II “natural born Citizen.”
Not being a “natural born Citizen, either because he was not born in the United States or because he was not born to two U.S. citizen parents or both, is Obama the usurper of whom President Monroe warned us?
Mario Apuzzo, Esq.
April 28, 2012
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Mario Apuzzo, Esq.
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