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Monday, January 25, 2016

If Winston Churchill Was Not Even a Citizen of the United States, How Can Ted Cruz Be Its Natural Born Citizen?

If Winston Churchill Was Not Even a Citizen of the United States, How Can Ted Cruz Be Its Natural Born Citizen?
                                                      By Mario Apuzzo, Esq. 
                                                          January 25, 2016
Image result for image winston churchill
Under the common law the nomenclature with which the Framers were familiar when they drafted and adopted the Constitution, all children born in a country to parents who were its citizens were “natives, or natural-born citizens,” and all the rest of the people were “aliens or foreigners,” who could be naturalized by some law.  See Emer de Vattel, The Law of Nations, or Principles of the Laws of Nature, Applied to the Conduct and Affairs of Nations and Sovereigns, bk. 1, c. 19, sec. 212 Citizens and natives (London 1797) (1st ed. Neuchatel 1758) ("The citizens are the members of the civil society: bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens"); Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162, 167 (1875) (“The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that 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.”); as to a natural born citizen, accord U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649, 665 (1898), citing Minor and quoting without criticism its common law definition of a natural born citizen and citing an quoting Horace Binney, Alienigenae of the United States, p. 22, note (2nd ed., Philadelphia, Dec. 1, 1853) ("The 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").
Senator and presidential contender Ted Cruz was born in 1970 in Canada to parents who, unlike Senator John McCain’s parents, were not serving the U.S. national defense. He therefore was not born or reputed born in the United States. He was also born to presumably a U.S. citizen mother, and to a non-U.S. citizen father (his father was Cuban). Hence he was also not born to two U.S. citizen parents. Cruz is at best a “citizen" of the United States “at birth,” but only by virtue of the 1952 Immigration and Naturalization Act, a naturalization Act of Congress (assuming that he was born to a U.S. citizen mother).  But failing both constitutional common law requirements for being a natural born citizen, i.e., born in the United States to U.S. citizen parents, he is not nor can he be a natural born citizen.  
On the contrary, Cruz does not agree that this common law definition of a natural born citizen under which he is not a natural born citizen is the only definition of a natural born citizen that has ever existed in the United States since July 4, 1776.  Rather, he tells us that it has been settled law since the adoption and ratification of the Constitution that a child born out of the United States to a U.S. citizen mother and a non-U.S. citizen father like him is also a natural born citizen. 
I have written several articles demonstrating why Cruz is not a natural born citizen and that he is wrong to maintain that he is.  These articles can be read at http://www.puzo1.blogspot.com
I read a comment by Ghost posted on January 17, 2016 at http://theconservativemonster.com/constitutional-lawyer-mario-apuzzo-cruz-is-not-a-natural-born-citizen/ , which asked:  “was Winston Churchill eligible to become President of the United States?  Churchill’s mother was an American citizen! of High Society Brooklyn and NYC.”  This question led me to investigate the matter and this is what I found. 
Churchill was born in Woodstock,  Oxfordshire, England, on November 30, 1874, to Lady Randolph Churchill (née Jennie Jerome), who was born in the United States, and to  Lord Randolph Churchill, a British citizen.  Hence, Churchill was like Cruz born out of the United States to what Cruz would consider a U.S. citizen mother and a non-U.S. citizen father. 
In 1963, Churchill was named an Honorary Citizen of the United States by An Act to proclaim Sir Winston Churchill an honorary citizen of the United States of America, Public Law 88-6/H.R. 4374; 88th Congress (1963) (9 April 1963). "H.R. 4374 (88th)".  Wikipedia also reports:  “On 29 November 1995, during a visit to the United Kingdom, President Bill Clinton of the United States announced to both Houses of Parliament that an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer would be named the USS Winston S. Churchill. This was the first United States warship to be named after a non-citizen of the United States since 1975.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill . 
Being born in 1874, the Naturalization Act of 1855, Section 1, Stat. 604, would have applied to Churchill when he was born.  On February 10, 1855, Congress enacted "An Act to Secure the Right of Citizenship to Children of Citizens of the United States Born Out of the Limits Thereof," (10 Stat.604). This Act stated, in part, that: “persons heretofore born, or hereafter to be born, out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States, whose fathers were or shall be at the time of their birth citizens of the United States, shall be deemed and considered and are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States: Provided, however, that the rights of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers never resided in the United States.” Under that Act, children born out of the United States to U.S. citizen fathers were considered as “citizens” of the United States.  Under this Act, U.S. citizen mothers were not capable to transmit their U.S. citizenship to their children born out of the United States to non-U.S. citizen fathers.  It was only in 1934 that Congress allowed U.S. citizen mothers to be able to make such children citizens of the United States. 
The 1855 Act also provided that a U.S. citizen woman marrying an alien husband made her an alien like her husband.  We have this explanation on that Act: 
Just as alien women gained U.S. citizenship by marriage, U.S.-born women often gained foreign nationality (and thereby lost their U.S. citizenship) by marriage to a foreigner. As the law increasingly linked women's citizenship to that of their husbands, the courts frequently found that U.S. citizen women expatriated themselves by marriage to an alien. For many years there was disagreement over whether a woman lost her U.S. citizenship simply by virtue of the marriage, or whether she had to actually leave the United States and take up residence with her husband abroad. Eventually it was decided that between 1866 and 1907 no woman lost her U.S. citizenship by marriage to an alien unless she left the United States. Yet this decision was probably of little comfort to some women who, resident in the United States since birth, had been unfairly treated as aliens since their marriages to noncitizens.(5) [5. Frederick A. Cleveland, American Citizenship as Distinguished from Alien Status (1927) pp. 65-66.]
Under the 1855 Act, Churchill’s U.S. citizen mother would have lost her U.S. citizenship when she married her non-U.S. citizen husband and moved to England.  Even if she did not lose her U.S. citizenship, Churchill could not become a citizen of the United States because he only had a U.S. citizen mother. 

Even if Churchill's mother had retained her U.S. citizenship as constitutionally ineligible de facto President Barack Obama’s mother did under Congress’s modern statutes, he still would not have been a natural born citizen, for he would have been born to an alien father.  For sure, he would have been subject to a foreign power from the moment of birth as much as if born to two alien parents. Consider that the constitutionally ineligible Senator Marco Rubio, Governor Bobby Jindal, and Governor Nikki Haley, while born in the United States, were born to no U.S. citizen parents. Furthermore, being born in a foreign country, under jus soli (right from the soil), Cruz also from the moment of birth acquired citizenship and allegiance to the country in which he was born.  Being born subject to a foreign power under U.S. law, i.e., being born in allegiance to a foreign power under U.S. law, disqualifies one from being a natural born citizen and therefore eligible to be President. 
No one contended that Winston Churchill was a citizen of the United States, let alone a natural born citizen of the United States.  Can we just imagine the Prime Minister of Great Britain being a natural born citizen of the United States and eligible to be President and Commander in Chief of the Military?  But yet, Ted Cruz wants us to accept that he, born under the same birth circumstances as Winston Churchill, but under a different naturalization Act, the 1952 Immigration and Naturalization Act which allowed a child born out of the United States to a U.S. citizen mother and non-U.S. citizen father to be a “citizen” of the United States at birth, is a natural born citizen and constitutionally eligible to be President.  So, just because a naturalization Act made him a citizen of the United States when a naturalization Act did not make Churchill born like him a citizen of the United States, Cruz wants us to believe that under that naturalization Act he is an Article II natural born citizen and that such a proposition has been settled law since the framing of the Constitution.  Sure, Ted, just like you did not know until 2013 that you were a Canadian citizen.  

I will leave you with these quotes from Churchill himself.  “I am, as you know, half American by blood, and the story of my association with that mighty and benevolent nation goes back nearly ninety years to the day of my father's marriage.” (1963). http://www.winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/62-finest-hour-151/1838--wit-and-wisdom-reflections-on-america . Some in the press wondered if Churchill, who was born to a U.S. citizen mother, would ever consider running for U.S. president.  When asked by a reporter in 1932 on running for President of the United States, he correctly and honestly responded: "There are various little difficulties in the way.  However, I have been treated so splendidly in the United States that I should be disposed, if you can amend the Constitution, seriously to consider the matter."  The Definitive Wit of Winston Churchill 18 (ed. Richard M. Langworth 2009). But then that's Winston Churchill, not Ted Cruz.  
Mario Apuzzo, Esq.
January 25, 2016
http://puzo1.blogspot.com
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