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Marco Rubio: Not a "Natural Born Citizen"?

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by YankeeFan, May 22, 2011.

  1. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

    Birthers have now determined that Jindal & Rubio are ineligible to be President:


    Commentary:

    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2723577/posts

    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2723550/posts
     
  2. secretariat

    secretariat Active Member

  3. suburbia

    suburbia Active Member

    If Rubio and Jindal had a claim to U.S. Citizenship at birth (born on U.S. soil, born to at least one parent who is a U.S. citizen, etc.), then they should be natural-born citizens.

    It's just as silly to be arguing these points about those two as it was to question Obama's natural-born citizenship.
     
  4. Smallpotatoes

    Smallpotatoes Well-Known Member

    Just birthers moving the goalposts and trying to make it look like this wasn't about their inability to accept that Obama won the last election.
     
  5. Herbert Anchovy

    Herbert Anchovy Active Member

    Does anyone really believe Marco Rubio is presidential timber?
     
  6. Stitch

    Stitch Active Member

    People actually get paid to come up with this crap. That's the biggest outrage in all of this. If anyone thinks Rubio and Jindal aren't eligible to be President, they should just wear a sign that they are idiots so normal people can avoid them.
     
  7. Armchair_QB

    Armchair_QB Well-Known Member

    No, the biggest outrage is that I'm not getting paid to come up with this. You know whoever did is getting top dollar.
     
  8. franticscribe

    franticscribe Well-Known Member

    The nuts making this argument seem to be conveniently ignoring the 14th Amendment's citizenship clause and the way the court has interpreted that for the last, I don't know, 115 years.

    If you're born on American soil you're a U.S. Citizen. A court would have to bend over itself backwards to adopt this "native born" vs. "natural born" distinction that birthers are pushing and decide that after 235 years we actually have three classes of citizenship (natural, native and naturalized) as opposed to the two we've known (natural and naturalized).
     
  9. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

  10. Stitch

    Stitch Active Member

    The birther garbage is still around because it's inconvenient to have real policy debates in this country. Thinking is too hard.
     
  11. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    Also a signal to all dark-skinned presidential hopefuls, regardless of party, that they're going to need to carry papers.
     
  12. crimsonace

    crimsonace Well-Known Member

    There is gray area in the 14th Amendment, because of those words "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof." However, you are correct in that the courts have interpreted it to mean anyone born in the U.S. is a U.S. citizen.

    Essentially, it's this. Would you have been eligible to receive a U.S. passport at birth? If so, you're "natural-born." If not, you're not. By the current ruling of the courts, Jindal and Rubio are both presidential eligibles.

    However, what they're beginning to get at is this -- children of immigrants shouldn't automatically receive citizenship, even if the immigrants are here legally. If one wants to take that argument, *legal* immigrants/aliens (as the parents of both Jindal and Rubio obviously were) are subject to the jurisdiction of the United States even if they don't have citizenship. If you have asylum or a green card, you're here. One can make the argument that *illegal* immigrants are breaking the law by being here and therefore not subject to such jurisdiction and their children are not entitled to citizenship, but that is currently not the view of the courts.

    Whatever the case, anyone trying to spike a Rubio/Jindal presidency on these grounds is an idiot (then again, so is anyone trying to spike an Obama presidency on the same claims. or someone trying to spike McCain's presidential bid because he was born in the Panama Canal zone). However, there is a large number of Americans -- many of whom unfortunately occupy my classroom and have to get a little bit of an education from me -- who think that all immigrants are illegal. I have to casually point out that my 4-year-old son (who was born in China and adopted at 15 months) is an immigrant, and he is definitely not illegal (I've actually been asked if he'll have to take the citizenship test when he gets old enough).

    With Jindal, I don't see it as a problem. After all, he pretty much killed his own presidential chances with his hideously-staged response a few years ago.
     
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