Vivek Ramaswamy seems to have admitted that he is not a natural-born citizen and therefore not constitutionally eligible to be elected President. In the following video, the moderator says his age is 38, and slightly later (00:34) Ramaswamy says his parents moved to this country 40 years ago.
Unless his parents were already citizens when they moved here, they were not citizens when he was born. A person has to live in the US for at least 5 years before they can even apply to become a citizen.
They probably were here on a temporary visa. They may have had Vivek to improve their chances of gaining permanent residency and eventually becoming citizens.
The requirement in the Constitution is that a candidate for the presidency be a natural-born citizen. If they had meant just born in the US, the Framers would have simply said that. The Framers of the Constitution were not stupid. They did not use words that had absolutely no meaning. What does it mean to be a natural born citizen?
A natural-born citizen is a term from the philosophy of natural law. It means the child of American parents born in the US, who has no claim on the citizenship of another country. Vivek was the child of two Indian-citizen parents when he was born and therefore had the right to Indian citizenship when he was born. His parents were not American citizens when he was born. Reportedly, his father has never obtained US citizenship, even to this day.
Some people, mainly progressives, think that public opinion or the decision of a judge — legislating from the bench — should be enough to change the Constitution. Americans should NOT go along with that.
This is the same way that judges legislating from the bench discovered a non-existent, right to abortion in the Constitution. They made it up on the fly!
Kamala Harris is not eligible for the vice-presidency in the same way and neither is Nikki Haley. To draw an analogy, because a bank has been robbed 3-4 times and the robbers got away with it does not change the law for the future. Americans should just refuse to vote for ineligible candidates. They should also publicly denounce such candidates. It is more than disgusting that two ineligible candidates were on the Republican debate stage, without anyone saying anything about it.
It is extremely dangerous to allow progressives and others of their ilk to just change the Constitution at will. They are also working hard to diminish and erase the 1st and 2nd Amendments. Should those parts of the Constitution also be changed on the fly according to the current public whim?
If any person born here would be eligible to become president, then two illegal aliens or a couple on tourist visas could conceive and give birth to an American president. That would be absurd and certainly not what the Framers of the Constitution intended. The 14th Amendment did not address or change the original, basic presidential eligibility requirement and it was never intended to do so. Yet, the 14th Amendment is often used to claim that anyone born in the U.S. can become president no matter how tenuous the connection of the family is to the US.
Americans should be a part of preserving the original intent of the Constitution, not its destruction. You can do that in this situation by denouncing those shameless candidates who are not eligible and refusing to vote for them.
Related Posts:
Who is a natural-born citizen?
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For more about the constitutional term “natural born Citizen” of the United States, see this book about that subject: http://www.kerchner.com/books/naturalborncitizen.htm
CDR Charles Kerchner (Ret)
ProtectOurLiberty [dot] org
Thanks, I ordered a signed copy.
Agreed, mostly. However, my view is that NBC only flows through the father, not the mother. Otherwise, you have some people with no NBC, and each person must have a country. Before the 1920’s, wife’s citizenship was same as husband’s so the issue was not important. Look at old constitutions, natural born citizenship always came from the father.
At the time the Constitution was written, the woman had limited rights and automatically took on the citizenship of her husband. To be consistent with that, both parents would have to be citizens a the time of birth of the child. However, I don’t want to argue about such details. The details can be worked out later. The main concern is to have people accept that “natural born” means that the baby obtains his citizenship from his parents, is born in the US and has no other claim to citizenship of another country. You can read what Vattel wrote about it at this link in section 212.
Vattel – Chapter 19 – Law of Nations
If the Government won’t enforce this requirement, the citizens can enforce it by just not voting for such people. It was enforced by the voters for over 200 years, though there was one controversy about Chester A. Arthur’s eligibility in the 1880’s, which I am not sure was ever resolved. His father may have been an Irish citizen and Chester A. Arthur was accused of being born in Canada.
A person can be a “citizen” without being a natural-born citizen. That’s the whole point. A NBC is a person whose parents were both American citizens at birth, born in the US. Ramaswamy is a US citizen by the 14th Amendment. He is just not a “natural-born” citizen, because neither of his parents were citizens when he was born, though he is a citizen via the 14th Amendment, because he was born in the US. Hope that makes sense to you.
They should not be allowed to run either. Why aren’t we talking about this? This is the first time I’ve heard this about these two
Exactly. You have not heard about it probably because the media has made a huge effort to brainwash the public into believing that the requirement is only that a person has to be born in the US to be eligible, even if the parents are illegal aliens, which is absurd. I just don’t believe that is what the Framers intended. There is historical evidence that they intended for the president to be born in the US of American parents. Throughout almost all of American history until very recently, this requirement has been enforced by the voters and could be enforced that way again if we can’t get the courts to act on it.
By the way, Kamala Harris is not eligible either, and she is already in office. Neither was Obama, because his father was not American, no matter where Obama was born. The argument that Obama was born in Kenya just seems to me to have been a huge distraction. He was already ineligible because his father was not American and that was public information.