Harris, Haley, and Ramaswamy Cannot Be President

by Don Fredrick, The Complete Obama Timeline, ©2023

(Aug. 29, 2023) — Kamala Harris, Nikki Haley, and Vivek Ramaswamy are not eligible to serve as president of the United States. Nor are Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. Why? They are not “natural born citizens,” which is one of the presidential requirements outlined in the U.S. Constitution. Making that claim, of course, immediately prompts a response of, “Of course they are natural born citizens! What are you, a racist?” But those who are eager to ridicule and condemn such a statement of ineligibility are merely demonstrating their ignorance of the term natural born citizen. What is important, however, is not what television pundits (or “pundints,” as they often incorrectly refer to themselves) believe the term means, but what the Founding Fathers understood the term to mean when they decreed the following:
 
“No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”
 
Probably close to 100 percent of Americans alive today believe the term natural born citizen simply means born in the United States of America. But that is not what the term meant to the authors of the U.S. Constitution.
 
The residents of the 13 original colonies were mostly British citizens, having emigrated to the New World from England. There were also Dutch and German settlers, and families from other European countries. But there were, of course, no U.S. citizens until the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. (One could instead argue that there were no U.S. citizens until the ratification of the U.S. Constitution.) Obviously, George Washington was not born a U.S. citizen. He was born a British citizen in 1732, and lived in the colony of Virginia.
 
One draft of the U.S. Constitution contained this presidential eligibility requirement:
 
“No Person except a Born Citizen shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”
 
To the Founding Fathers, the term “born citizen” meant born on native soil—without regard to the citizenship of the parents. John Jay (who later became the first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court) then wrote George Washington and asked that all presidents be required to be natural born citizens. That term was understood at the time to mean born on U.S. soil to two U.S. citizen parents.
 
The logic of Jay’s argument was that a natural born citizen would be further removed from ties to other nations than would a citizen whose parents were not born on U.S. soil. (As an example, some might question whether, because of their Indian ancestry, a President Nikki Haley, a President Vivek Ramaswamy, or a President Kamala Harris would be more eager to side with India if that country were to go to war with Pakistan.) John Jay therefore suggested that the presidency be limited to natural born citizens. But simply making the change from “born” to “natural born” would have been inadequate:

“No Person except a natural born Citizen shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”
 
The problem with that text would be that neither George Washington nor John Adams (nor any other adult) was a natural born citizen of the United States! Those potential presidents aged 35 or older who were born on what later became U.S. soil (such as George Washington) obviously could not have had U.S. citizen parents at the time of their births–because the United States did not yet exist. In other words, it would be 35 years before any natural born citizen could qualify to serve as president. To allow for that problem, the final version read:
 
“No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution [italics added], shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”
 
The italicized “grandfather clause” is essentially a “loophole” that means, “We cannot go without a president for decades while we wait for our infant natural born citizens to reach age 35, so we will temporarily allow individuals who are not natural born citizens to serve as president—as long as they were living here in the colonies and became U.S. citizens when the nation was founded.”
 
Considering the above, it is obvious that the Founding Fathers understood there was a difference between the terms born citizen (born on U.S. soil) and natural born citizen (born on U.S. soil to two U.S. citizen parents). To argue that those two terms mean the same thing is to argue that there was no purpose to John Jay’s letter, no purpose to the change in the language of the Constitution’s presidential eligibility requirement, and no justification for the requirement’s “grandfather clause.”
 
The term “citizen” is generic. There are several kinds of citizens. A “born citizen” is a person born in U.S. soil to legal resident parents who are not themselves U.S. citizens. A “natural born citizen” is born on U.S. soil to parents who are U.S. citizens at the time of the child’s birth. A “naturalized citizen” is an immigrant from another country who becomes a U.S. citizen via the legal naturalization process.
 
Citizen is the umbrella term that covers born citizens, natural born citizens, and naturalized citizens. All natural born citizens are citizens, but not all citizens are natural born citizens. (Similarly, the term “vehicle” is an umbrella term that includes trucks, automobiles, and motorcycles. All trucks are vehicles, but not all vehicles are trucks.) These distinctions are not insignificant, especially in a court of law. Sadly, far too many politicians, pundits, and talking heads on television fail to make the distinctions.
 
In the 1885 U.S. Supreme Court case Minor v. Happersett, Chief Justice Morrison Waite wrote, “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 [italics added] became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners. Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first.” That is, there was agreement by the majority of legal scholars in 1885 that the term natural born citizen meant “born in the United States to two U.S.-citizen parents.” (A minority argued that the citizenship of the parents was not material but, without justification, some accept that less common interpretation.)
 
The Supreme Court has never ruled on the meaning of the term natural born citizen. It certainly had the opportunity to do so with the Obama eligibility challenge lawsuit Kerchner v. Obama, but the Justices declined to accept the case for review. One must ask why the court was afraid to accept such an important case for review inasmuch as it would have put the issue to rest once and for all. The answer is that the court likely knew it would have to rule against Barack Obama, and it was reluctant to do so—perhaps because the Justices assumed it might have resulted in political upheaval and nationwide riots. But because the Court chose not to hear Kerchner, the issue may again rear its ugly head for Harris, Haley, and Ramaswamy in 2024. (Some might assume that the power brokers in Washington, D.C. knew full well that Obama was not a natural born citizen because his Kenyan father was not a U.S. citizen, but chose to ignore the issue. The Republicans “gave a pass” to Obama in exchange for the Democrats giving a pass to the GOP’s own rising stars: Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal, and Nikki Haley. They got away with it because the media leftists eagerly supported Obama—and were too lazy to research the history of the term natural born citizen.)
 
Obama was arguably the nation’s second illegal president. (The first illegal president was Chester A. Arthur, who hid from the public the fact that his father was not a U.S. citizen at Chester’s birth. Arthur even went so far as to burn his father’s documents—something that would not have been necessary if his father’s citizenship was irrelevant.) Regardless of where Obama was born, his father was not a U.S. citizen—if one assumes his father was the drunken Kenyan bureaucrat with the same name. Obama is therefore not a natural born citizen. (Of course, if Obama’s father was actually Frank Marshall Davis, his communist mentor in Hawaii, then Obama is a natural born citizen because Davis, like Obama’s mother, was a U.S. citizen. Ironically, Obama’s efforts to hide the identity of his father are what caused the question of his eligibility to come up. Had he made it known from the start that Davis was his father, no one would have questioned whether he was a natural born citizen—but they would have better understood his resentment toward America, European colonialists, Jews, Israel, and capitalism, and his affection for Marxism. The obviously forged Obama birth certificate prompts this question: “Was Obama trying to hide his place of birth or the identity of his father?”)
 
Kamala Harris was born in California to an Indian mother and a Jamaican father, both of whom were in the United States on student visas. Harris is what many would refer to as an “anchor baby.” The Founding Fathers would most certainly not have considered Harris a natural born citizen. Her parents were living in the United States at the time of her birth but they were not permanent residents with “green cards.” Arguably, Harris was born with the inherited Jamaican citizenship of her father. Harris’s parents separated and eventually divorced. Kamala moved to Canada with her mother. (It may be that her mother’s student visa expired and she chose to move to Canada rather than return to India. Canada’s immigration rules are less strict than those of the United States, and many foreigners travel to Canada to make it easier to later enter the United States.) Harris and her mother eventually left Canada and moved back to the United States.
 
Vivek Ramaswamy and Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) are, like Kamala Harris, anchor babies. Ramaswamy was born to Indian-citizen parents who were in the United States on student visas. Rubio was born in the United States to Cuban-citizen parents.
 
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) was born in Calgary, Canada to a Cuban-citizen father and an American mother. He is not a natural born citizen of the U.S. Many claim that the 14th Amendment applies to Cruz, but the 14th Amendment never even uses the term natural born citizen. One cannot magically pretend that any time the generic word “citizen” is used in the Constitution, its Amendments, or a federal statute that it automatically also means “natural born citizen.” It does not. Any first year law student would (or at least should) receive a failing grade from his professor if he made such an argument. Claiming that the word “citizen” in legislation also always means “natural born citizen” is as wrong-headed as claiming that wherever a state or city ordinance uses the term “automobile” it also means “truck” or “motorcycle.” Words have meanings. (It is worth noting that Cruz’s mother reportedly voted in Canadian elections, apparently having lived there long enough to become a Canadian citizen.)
 
Those who claim Cruz is a natural born citizen should be asked to explain why former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was not. Churchill, like Cruz, was not born in the United States. Churchill, like Cruz, had an American mother. Churchill, like Cruz, had a father who was not a U.S. citizen. How can Cruz and Churchill not share the same citizenship status if they shared the same birth circumstances? The two crown princes of Jordan, like Cruz and Churchill, have an American mother, a non-American father, and were not born in the United States. Would anyone claim that they are natural born citizens of the United States? If not, why should they claim that Cruz is?
 
Interestingly, in 2008 the supporters of Barack Obama insisted that he was born in Hawaii and not Kenya, understanding that no one would consider him eligible for the presidency if people believed he was born outside the United States. Yet in 2016 few people seemed to care that Republican primary candidate Ted Cruz was born outside the United States. If Obama would have been ineligible had he been born in Kenya, why would Cruz have been eligible despite having been born in Canada? Both Obama and Cruz had non-American fathers and American mothers. What happened between 2008 and 2016 to change the perceived definition of the term natural born citizen? (Note that Obama’s presumed father was a British subject in 1961. Kenya did not yet exist as an independent nation and was a British Protectorate. Some would argue that Obama inherited his father’s British citizenship upon his birth, regardless of whether he was born in Hawaii or Kenya.)
 
Section 1 of the 14th Amendment states:
 
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
 
Those who somehow believe the 14th Amendment “proves their case” that simply being born in the U.S. makes a person a “natural born citizen” should be reminded that the term appears nowhere in the text. Only the generic term citizen appears. They should also be advised that Congressman John Bingham–who authored that amendment—said on the floor of the House of Representatives in 1862, “All from other lands, who by the terms of laws and a compliance with their provisions become naturalized, are adopted citizens of the United States; all other persons born within the Republic, of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty [italics added], are natural born citizens.” Read that again and let it sink in. In 1862, the members of Congress understood that a natural born citizen was someone born on U.S. soil to two U.S. citizen parents—not someone born to parents who were still citizens of other countries to which they owed their allegiance. Let it also sink in that no law has been passed since then to change the meaning of the term, nor has there been an amendment to the U.S. Constitution with regard to that issue, nor has there been a relevant Supreme Court ruling.
 
In 1866 Bingham stated, “Every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty [italics added] is, in the language of your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen.” Obama supporters—including attorneys filing briefs with the U.S. Supreme Court—have intentionally omitted the words “of parents” when quoting Bingham’s statement, in a shameful effort to mislead. Ask yourself, “Why would Obama’s attorneys have thought it might help their client if they omitted the words ‘of parents?’”
 
Simply being born on U.S. soil does not make an individual a natural born citizen. It only makes him a generic citizen—and he is not even that unless he is both born in the United States and “subject to the jurisdiction thereof. The purpose of the 14th Amendment was not to grant immediate citizenship to babies born after their pregnant mothers waded across the Rio Grande. Its purpose was to declare that freed slaves were to be considered U.S. citizens.
 
There is a difference between children born on U.S. soil to foreign born parents who have been granted legal status to permanently reside in the U.S., and children born to parents who are simply visiting the U.S. on vacation, or who are temporarily attending an American university, or who crossed the border illegally.
 
It is also worth noting 8 U.S. Code § 1401 – Nationals and citizens of United States at birth:
 
“The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth:
 
(a) a person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof;
 
(b) a person born in the United States to a member of an Indian, Eskimo, Aleutian, or other aboriginal tribe: Provided, That the granting of citizenship under this subsection shall not in any manner impair or otherwise affect the right of such person to tribal or other property;
 
(c) a person born outside of the United States and its outlying possessions of parents both of whom are citizens of the United States and one of whom has had a residence in the United States or one of its outlying possessions, prior to the birth of such person;
 
(d) a person born outside of the United States and its outlying possessions of parents one of whom is a citizen of the United States who has been physically present in the United States or one of its outlying possessions for a continuous period of one year prior to the birth of such person, and the other of whom is a national, but not a citizen of the United States;
 
(e) a person born in an outlying possession of the United States of parents one of whom is a citizen of the United States who has been physically present in the United States or one of its outlying possessions for a continuous period of one year at any time prior to the birth of such person;
 
(f) a person of unknown parentage found in the United States while under the age of five years, until shown, prior to his attaining the age of twenty-one years, not to have been born in the United States;
 
(g) a person born outside the geographical limits of the United States and its outlying possessions of parents one of whom is an alien, and the other a citizen of the United States who, prior to the birth of such person, was physically present in the United States or its outlying possessions for a period or periods totaling not less than five years, at least two of which were after attaining the age of fourteen years: Provided,
 
That any periods of honorable service in the Armed Forces of the United States, or periods of employment with the United States Government or with an international organization as that term is defined in section 288 of title 22 by such citizen parent, or any periods during which such citizen parent is physically present abroad as the dependent unmarried son or daughter and a member of the household of a person (A) honorably serving with the Armed Forces of the United States, or (B) employed by the United States Government or an international organization as defined in section 288 of title 22, may be included in order to satisfy the physical-presence requirement of this paragraph. This proviso shall be applicable to persons born on or after December 24, 1952, to the same extent as if it had become effective in its present form on that date; and
 
(h) a person born before noon (Eastern Standard Time) May 24, 1934, outside the limits and jurisdiction of the United States of an alien father and a mother who is a citizen of the United States who, prior to the birth of such person, had resided in the United States.”
 
Subsection (g) applies to individuals like Ted Cruz. It would also apply to Obama if he was born in Kenya to his American mother and his presumed Kenyan father. But subsection (g) does not make Cruz or Obama natural born citizens. The statute above only declares that an individual who satisfies one or more of the above sets of requirements is a generic U.S. citizen. It does not state that he or she is a natural born citizen. The statute refers only to “citizen” and not to “natural born citizen.”
 
If Cruz and Obama are assumed to be natural born citizens simply because their mothers were U.S. citizens, then subsection (g) is superfluous and serves no purpose. Why write a statute declaring a person to be a generic U.S. citizen if the mere fact that one parent is a U.S. citizen makes the child a natural born citizen of the U.S.? If Cruz and Obama are assumed to be natural born citizens simply because their mothers were U.S. citizens, then their place of birth is irrelevant. But, of course, the statute and subsection (g) exist because simply being born in the United States or having one U.S. citizen parent is not enough to make a person a natural born citizen.
 
One either has natural born citizen status at birth or one does not. It cannot be granted at a future date. It is based solely on place of birth and the citizenship of the parents at the moment of birth. Any statutes that define citizenship based on other criteria pertain only to generic citizenship, and not natural born citizen status.
 
It is clear that birth on U.S. soil does not by itself make a person a natural born citizen. The citizenship of the parents is also a determining factor. For those who do not like that requirement, the proper course of action is not to ignore the Constitution (as has been done with Obama, Harris, Haley, Cruz, Rubio, and Ramaswamy), it is to amend the Constitution. That is not an easy task, but it is the proper path to take if a majority of the citizens would like the eligibility requirement to be changed.
 
The ”anchor baby” issue is also significant. Having a baby born in the United States is currently almost a guarantee that its illegal alien parents will not be deported. However, considering those babies to be U.S. citizens conflicts with the 14th Amendment, the purpose of which was to recognize the citizenship rights of slaves, and that recognizes citizenship only if the child is “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S. But “anchor babies” arguably inherit the citizenship of their parents. (That is the rule generally followed by the rest of the world.) The anchor baby problem can be resolved by Congress without a Constitutional amendment. Legislation should be passed declaring that mere birth on U.S. soil is not enough for an individual to be considered a U.S. citizen. Citizenship should be granted only if the parents are U.S. citizens themselves, or if they are foreigners legally residing in the United States. Citizenship should not be granted if the parents are illegal aliens or tourists.
 
None of this is to argue for or against the governing abilities of Harris, Haley, Ramaswamy, Cruz, Rubio—or Obama. Nor is it a racial or ethnic issue. (We should not have ineligible blonde Swedes running for president either.) Those are not the issues. The issue is that the Constitution serves no purpose if it is not followed, and that the words within it must be understood through the eyes of its authors. Perhaps after the 14th Amendment issues raised here have been resolved we can then set about getting the politicians to follow Amendments one through ten.