[EL] Who is a "Natural Born Citizen

[Mozaffar, Shaheen]

I want to thank you all of you for your very helpful responses to my queries about “natural born citizens.”  You gave me very good materials for at least two, possibly three, lectures.

The reason for my “mini law exam” questions” (per Ilya Shapiro J) is that I am not a constitutional expert, but a political scientist with a reputation among colleagues of being an unapologetic Madisonian and a hard-nosed constitutionalist.

I have couple of specific follow-ups that I will ask in this one email instead of cluttering up in-boxes with multiple emails:

To Richard Winger: The omission of DC was unintentional.

To Jon Roland and Ilya Shapiro: RE birth on US-flagged ship or plane -- Is it a general principle, then, that a newborn on a plane or ship is automatically eligible for citizenship of country in which the ship docks or the plane lands?

To Ilya Shapiro: Re your 2013 Daily Caller op-ed – Am I correct that if Ms. Ann Dunham, President Obama’s mother did not meet the 5-year-post-age-14 residency requirement, President Obama did not meet the citizenship requirement?  Or is this a dead horse, especially since none of the more than a dozen challenges to President Obama’s eligibility since 2008 has been successful, which suggests, at least to me, that the Courts consider this either a frivolous or simply a non-issue.

A general question about citizenship and voting: Am I correct that some states and/or some localities allow non-US citizens (both legal immigrants with green card and foreigners without) to vote in local elections, such as school committees and municipal offices?  I would appreciate references to statutes and data on this.  Thank you!

Btw, for those who might be interested, citizenship and parentage have been used disqualify political opponents, especially in presidential contests, and also to discredit (and exile) political opponents and high profile media critics in Botswana, Cote de Ivoire, Tanzania, Swaziland, and Zambia, among other African countries.  The most egregious example was in Zambia in 1996 when the incumbent government used its legislative dominance to pass a constitutional amendment requiring that both parents of a presidential candidate must be Zambian by birth.  This was a blatant attempt to disqualify Kenneth Kaunda from running in the 1996 elections because his father was born in what is now Malawi, although Kaunda himself was born in Zambia.  What made this action particularly egregious was that Kaunda was Zambia’s founding father and served as the country first president from 1964 until 1991 when he was defeated in the country’s first democratic elections since independence.  Kaunda’s citizenship was stripped because of the 1996 law but the Court restored it in 1999.

Cheers
Shaheen

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Shaheen Mozaffar, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Political Science
180 Summer Street
Bridgewater State University
Bridgewater, MA 02325
USA

+1-508-531-2291 (me)
+1-508-531-1387 (dept)
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smozaffar at bridgew.edu<mailto:smozaffar at bridgew.edu><mailto:smozaffar at bridgew.edu>
www.bridgew.edu<http://www.bridgew.edu/><http://www.bridgew.edu/>
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________________________________
From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Jon Roland [jon.roland at constitution.org]
Sent: Friday, January 08, 2016 1:48 PM
To: law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] Who is a "Natural Born Citizen

Ilya is mostly correct, with the following exceptions:

1. The incorporated territories are U.S. soil, so being born in one of them counts as "natural born".

2. All of these are naturalization by statute, not "natural born".

3. No need for grandfathering. Incorporated territories are U.S. soil. The Panama Canal Zone was a leasehold, not U.S. soil. We had to leave when the lease expired and we couldn't negotiate renewal.

4. None of these are incorporated territories. They are protectorates. But those natural born in Puerto Rico were naturalized by statute, which does not make them natural born for purposes of presidential eligibility.

4a. There is a statute that makes children of U.S. military personnel stationed abroad U.S. citizens, but they have to file for it shortly after birth. Otherwise the kid is stateless. Some embassies abroad may be U.S. soil depending on the terms of the embassy treaty, but the kid would have to be born within the embassy.

5. U.S. flag vessels do not carry U.S. sovereignty, except for imposition of criminal penalties. Once a plane lands, or a ship enters U.S. territorial waters, that would be U.S. soil.





-- Jon

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