Citizen at Birth vs. Natural Born Citizen?

From Mario Apuzzo's blog: A Place to Ask Questions and to Get the Right Answers
Posted by cfkerchner at 11:45 PM
Thursday, July 16, 2009

Citizen at Birth (CAB) does NOT equal Natural Born Citizen (NBC)

While a natural born citizen is obviously a citizen at birth, not all citizens at birth are natural born citizens. The two legal terms of art are not identical and are not equal.

There is absolutely nothing in that U.S. Statute, USC Title 8 Section 1401, that grants “natural born citizenship" to anyone. The legal term of art “natural born citizen” is not even mentioned in that law. USC Title 8 Section 1401 only determines by law who is a “citizen” or a “national” of the U.S. at birth, i.e., a basic "citizen at birth". The Section 1401 law is a naturalization law which grants citizenship by law, not by nature. The legal term of art “citizen at birth” is not the same legally as the legal term of art “natural born citizen”. Simply note that in one case we are talking about who is at least an ordinary, basic “citizen” at birth with no adjectives in front of the word citizen, and in the other case we have two very important adjectives placed in front of the word citizen by the framers of the Constitution, i.e., “natural born” citizen. That specific type of citizenship and "legal term of art" was codified by Vattel in his legal treatise "The Law of Nations", published in 1758, in which he said that ... a natural born citizen is a person born in the country to parents who are both citizens of the country. And this group or class of citizens are the most populous group of any nation.

Most citizens of the USA are natural born citizens. Most citizens of the USA were born in the USA to two parents who were citizens of the USA. And that is the pool of citizens that must be chosen from for the singular most powerful office in our nation, the President and Commander-in-Chief of our military. Simple citizenship at birth by being born in the USA without regard to the citizenship status of both your parents ... or by naturalization and swearing an oath to this country and renouncing all allegiances foreign kings, princes, and potentates later as an adult, is adequate for the offices of Senator, Representative, or a Governor of a state. But it is not sufficient to be the President under Article II, to Constitutional standards. Article II requires that the person to be eligible to be President must be a "natural born citizen". And that means that person must be born in the USA ... AND ... both his parents must be citizens of the USA.

Natural born citizenship status in a nation is granted by the facts of nature of your birth. No law or statute is necessary to grant it. The nations can make any law they wish to make a person a citizen at birth or later. But natural born citizenship can only be conveyed by nature by the facts at birth of the child. If you are born in the country of two citizen parents you are "naturally" ... a "natural born citizen" … a citizen too … but a specific kind of citizen who is eligible to be the President and Commander-in-Chief of our military since the child when born has sole allegiance to this country and there is no claim on him/her by a foreign country or power as to their citizenship at birth by that country too. Natural born citizens have unity of citizenship at birth. A natural born citizen is NOT a dual citizen at birth. A natural born citizen has no divided loyalty issues by his birth since the child was born in the country to two citizens of the country.

See this chart showing the five types of citizenship mentioned in the U.S Constitution:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/11737124/

And natural born citizens are not rare in the USA. The natural born citizens are by far the most populous group in the nation. And it from this group, under Article II of our Constitution, we are to choose our President and Commander-in-Chief, the group with sole allegiance at birth to the USA and only the USA, not someone who has foreign and/or dual citizenship and divided loyalties at and by birth.

Obama's father was not a citizen of the USA, nor was he an immigrant to the USA, nor was he even a permanent resident of the USA. Obama when born in 1961 was a British Subject via his British Subject father, per the British Nationality Act of 1948 which governed the status of children born to British Subjects. Obama thus was born with dual citizenship and allegiances and a foreign claim on his allegiance. Obama is not a natural born citizen of the USA and he is not eligible to be the President under Article II of our U.S. Constitution. He is a Usurper.

Charles F. Kerchner, Jr.
CDR USNR Retired
Lead Plaintiff
Kerchner et al vs Obama & Congress et al

The Trip to Pakistan in 1981 outs Obama

Based upon Dr. Orly Taitz's blog: http://defendourfreedoms.us/
March 9, 2009

Well is He or Isn't He?

Paul Hollrah

It is a popular topic of discussion in political circles these days, and as the weeks pass more and more people are asking, “Is Barack Obama really a natural born citizen of the United States? Is he eligible to serve as President, or isn’t he?” If he is, then so be it. We’ll just have to grit our teeth until this long dark nightmare comes to an end…one way or another.

But what if he is not eligible? What then? Well, in that case we have a problem…a very large problem, the solution to which could tear asunder the fabric of American society.

Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution states that, “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.”

That’s pretty straightforward, yet, when confronted with the possibility that the man who sits in the Oval Office may be a usurper, a great many otherwise patriotic Americans can be heard to say, “What difference does it make? The election’s over; the people have spoken. Get over it!”

Well, it’s not quite as simple as all that, and the sooner we can all be satisfied that Obama is or is not a natural born citizen the better. To postpone that finding for a year or two and then find, conclusively, that Obama is not eligible to serve as president would be disastrous. Every new law and every executive order he had signed, every political appointment, every judicial appointment, every order he had given to the military, and every act and every decision of all of his appointees would immediately become null and void. How could we ever undo all of that? The American people would quickly learn that it is not much easier to undo two or three years of history than it is to undo a decade or a century. Obama must end his stubborn refusal to produce his birth certificate, his passports, his visas, and his college records. We must continue to recruit more and more Americans to insist that he do so.

To do that it is not necessary to prove that he was born in Kenya, not in Hawaii…as his paternal grandmother, a Kenyan half-brother, and a Kenyan half-sister insist…or who his natural father may have been. The proof of Obama’s failure to meet the “natural born citizen” standard is much simpler than that.

To convert a non-believer…one who insists that the Constitutional requirements must be met, but who believes that questions about Obama’s citizenship status are nothing more than sour grapes…it is only necessary to establish the facts surrounding Obama’s travel to Indonesia and Pakistan in the summer of 1981.

Although Obama fails to mention that trip in either of his memoirs…not in Dreams from My Father and not in The Audacity of Hope…he made a potentially fatal error when he mentioned the Pakistan trip during an April 6, 2008 speech in San Francisco…the same speech in which he referred to rural Pennsylvanians as “bitter” people who “cling to guns or religion…” In that speech, Obama explained in an offhand manner the value of that trip, vis-à-vis his knowledge of foreign affairs, saying, “I knew what Sunni and Shia was (sic) before I joined the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.”

When questioned about that trip, Obama’s campaign press secretary, Bill Burton, confirmed to the New York Times, and others, that Obama had visited Pakistan in 1981 on his return from Indonesia, traveling there with a Pakistani friend from Occidental College, Wahid Hamid. According to Burton, Obama stayed in Karachi with the family of another Pakistani friend, Mohammed Hasan Chandoo. Obama has never mentioned the Pakistan trip again.

So it is well established that Obama did travel to Indonesia and Pakistan in 1981. What is not established, and what is critically important, is what passport he used during that trip. There are only three possibilities: Obama could have traveled under a U.S. passport…a passport first issued when he and his mother moved from Hawaii to Indonesia in 1967; he could have traveled under an Indonesian passport, issued following his adoption by his Indonesian stepfather; and it is conceivable that, if he was, in fact, born in Kenya in 1961, he could still have been a British subject, traveling with a British passport. So which is it?

Unfortunately for Obama, in the present circumstance, Pakistan was under martial law in 1981 and certain undesirables…Christians, Jews, and Americans…were prohibited from entering the country. Pakistan was on the U.S. State Department’s “no travel” list, making a U.S. passport no more valuable than an empty chewing gum wrapper at the Karachi Port of Entry.

So how did a young man who arrived in New York in early June 1981, without the price of a hotel room in his pocket, suddenly come up with the price of a round-the-world trip just a month later? And once he was on a plane, shuttling between New York, Jakarta, and Karachi, what passport was he offering when he passed through Customs and Immigration? The American people not only deserve to have answers to these questions, they must have answers.

It makes the debate over Obama’s citizenship a rather short and simple one.

Q: Did he travel to Pakistan in 1981, at age 20?
A: Yes, by his own admission.

Q: What passport did he travel under?
A: There are only three possibilities:

1. He traveled with a U.S. passport;
2. He traveled with a British passport; or
3. He traveled with an Indonesian passport.

Q: Is it possible that Obama traveled with a U.S. passport in 1981?
A: No. It is not possible. Pakistan was on the U.S. State Department’s “no travel” list in 1981.

Conclusion: When Obama went to Pakistan in 1981 he was traveling either with a British passport or an Indonesian passport.

If he was traveling with a British passport that would provide proof that he was born in Kenya on August 4, 1961, not in Hawaii as he claims. And if he was traveling with an Indonesian passport that would tend to prove that he relinquished whatever previous citizenship he held, British or American, when adopted by his Indonesian step-father in 1967.

Whatever the truth of the matter, the American people deserve to know how he managed to become a “natural born” American citizen between 1981 and 2008. The sooner we learn the truth of all this, the better.

Is he a “natural born” citizen, or isn’t he? It seems pretty clear from currently available evidence that he is not. If this proves to be the case he should minimize the damage to the country and follow the Nixon example; he should simply resign from office so that we can begin to clean up the mess he leaves behind.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Paul Hollrah is a Senior Fellow at the Lincoln Heritage Institute.