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In reply to the discussion: ABC Reporter Calls Out Ted Cruz: ‘Come on!’ The Shutdown Was Your Fault! [View all]Jim Lane
(11,175 posts)Last edited Tue Dec 31, 2013, 03:21 PM - Edit history (1)
My source is this analysis by Professor Eugene Volokh. He's certainly no progressive, having endorsed Fred Thompson in 2008, but he wrote this just after the 2008 election, when the issue being discussed was Obama's eligibility and Ted Cruz was scarcely a cloud on the national horizon.
Furthermore, according to Volokh's research, the 1986 change reduced but did not eliminate the residency requirement for the citizen parent in order for him or her to confer citizenship to the foreign-born child. Even if it applied to Cruz, it would still leave room for someone to demand proof that his mother really did live in the United States for enough time in the 1950s and 1960s.
My recollection, from when I was looking at this more closely (and being denounced as a "Marxist thug" by Orly Taitz herself, if you'll pardon me for boasting about one of the proudest moments of my life), is that the residency requirement has since been abolished entirely. That leads many people to err on this point. They go to the statute books and see what the law says about people born abroad to one citizen and one non-citizen. They don't realize that what they read in the law today isn't what's relevant to determining the eligibility of someone born when the law was different.
ETA: Oops, my memory was wrong about the current law. There's still a residency requirement but it's one that Obama's mother would have met (if he had been born in Kenya after the 1986 change). According to the State Department website:
A child born abroad to one U.S. citizen parent and one alien parent acquires U.S. citizenship at birth under Section 301(g) of the INA provided the U.S. citizen parent was physically present in the United States or one of its outlying possessions for the time period required by the law applicable at the time of the child's birth. (For birth on or after November 14, 1986, a period of five years physical presence, two after the age of fourteen, is required. For birth between December 24, 1952 and November 13, 1986, a period of ten years, five after the age of fourteen, is required for physical presence in the United States or one of its outlying possessions to transmit U.S. citizenship to the child.) The U.S. citizen parent must be genetically related to the child to transmit U.S. citizenship.