Qualifications for President and the “Natural Born” Citizenship Eligibility Requirement
Expatriation is the voluntary renunciation or abandonment of nationality and allegiance. [footnotes omitted] It has no application to the removal from this country of a native citizen during minority. In such a case the voluntary action which is of the essence of the right of expatriation is lacking.[1]
The Supreme Court in a subsequent decision, in Mandoli v. Acheson in 1952, confirmed the meaning of its earlier decision in Perkins v. Elg, explaining:
What it [Perkins v. Elg] held was that citizenship conferred by our Constitution upon a child born under its protection cannot be forfeited because the citizen during nonage is a passive beneficiary of foreign naturalization proceedings….[2]
The Supreme Court concluded in that case: “[W]e think the dignity of citizenship which the Constitution confers as a birthright upon every person born within its protection is not to be withdrawn or extinguished by the courts except pursuant to a clear statutory mandate.”[3] Simply stated, the Supreme Court noted that to expatriate and forfeit one’s U.S. citizenship “there must be a voluntary action and such action cannot be attributed to an infant whose removal to another country is beyond his control and who during minority is incapable of a binding choice.”[4]
Assertion of Two Citizen-Parent Requirement
Other lawsuits, which were also summarily dismissed, alleged that even if President Obama had been born in Hawaii, he was not a “natural born” citizen because his father was not a U.S. citizen, but rather was a citizen of Kenya and therefore a British subject. It was argued that President Obama at birth would thus have been entitled to British citizenship by operation of British laws. As one who had or was entitled to “dual citizenship,” it was argued that President Obama could not be a “natural born citizen” of the United States.[5] This argument would also entail the unique notion that under American jurisprudence parental citizenship or lineage is the determining factor for eligibility to the Presidency for native born U.S. citizens.
Dual Citizenship. Merely because a child born within the United States could have, under the operation of foreign law, been a citizen also of that foreign nation because of a parent’s nationality, citizenship, or place of birth (i.e., “dual citizenship”), would not affect the status of that child as a U.S. citizen “at birth” under the Fourteenth Amendment, the federal nationality laws, nor under Article II of the Constitution. The citizenship laws, rights, or recognitions of other nations could not influence and impact the United States’ own determination of who its citizens “at birth” would be, that is, who would be a “natural born” citizen, as the question of
- ↑ Perkins v. Elg, 307 U.S. 325, 329, 334 (1939). See also Rogers v. Bellei, 401 U.S. 815, 835 (1971): : “… Congress has no ‘power, express or implied, to take away an American citizen’s citizenship without his assent.’ Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U.S., at 257.”
- ↑ 344 U.S. 133, 138–139 (1952).
- ↑ Id. at 139.
- ↑ Perkins v. Elg, 307 U.S. at 334.
- ↑ See, e.g., .arguments in Donofrio v. Wells, No. 08A407, Application for Emergency Stay to the United States Supreme Court, contending that “candidate Obama is not eligible to the Presidency as he would not be a ‘natural born citizen’ of the United States even if it were proven he was born in Hawaii, since… Senator Obama’s father was born in Kenya and therefore, having been born with split and competing loyalties, candidate Obama is not a ‘natural born citizen’….” See also Berg v. Obama, 574 F.Supp.2d at 513.
