Legislative History of INA 301(g)

The Citizenship of Ted Cruz Tied to Womens Rights Movement

The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth:
INA 301 g. a person born outside the geographical limits of the United States
and its outlying possessions of parents one of whom is an alien, and the other a
citizen of the United States who, prior to the birth of such person, was physically
present in the United States.
Not all, but many legal professionals conclude that because Ted Cruz was a citizen at birth, he is
Article II eligible to the presidency.
However, at the time of the framers there were only four ways to become a citizen:
1.
2.
3.
4.

You were a citizen of one of the states at the time of adoption of the constitution
You were born to a U.S. citizen father (more on the mother later)
Your father naturalized while you were a minor child
You naturalized after reaching the age of majority

Under both our First Uniform Naturalization Act of 1790 and the British Nationality Act of 1772, a
child was the same foreign nationality as the father. Children were born with the fathers
nationality through sanguinity, through blood, a legitimate and natural inheritance.
Now, consider this fact: That at the time of the framers and over 100-years of our history, Ted
Cruz would have only become a citizen of the United States under #4 in the list above.
Based on both British and United States law, even if the mother was born a U.S. citizen, being
married to a Canadian or British subject her child born in the United States would not be a U.S.
citizen. And Ted Cruz was born in Canada.
So, I ask you the following:
1. Would the framers and Article II as written and intended consider Ted Cruz a natural
born citizen?
2. Under 1930's naturalization law, did repatriation to the United States of a mother with
minor children, married to an alien father, revise Article II as written and intended?
(See Intermediate Scrutiny Test)
The answer to both is No.
While naturalization law was once uncomplicated, the womens rights movement unintentionally
created a dichotomy in the legal doctrine of sanguinity, requiring an expansion of naturalization
laws to deal with dual nationality at birth and repatriation.

What is Naturalization?
The Illinois Board of Elections decided that Ted Cruz was a natural born citizen. "The board
distinguished between natural born and naturalized citizens, pointing out that Cruz did not have
to take any steps to go through a naturalization process at some point after birth.

By process the board makes a common mistake, only seeing naturalization as that of an adult
renouncing one citizenship (Ted Cruz renounced Canadian citizenship in 2014) and being
permitted to take the Oath of Allegiance for U.S. citizenship. However, there is more to
naturalization, as can be seen in the extensive body of law.
A minor's nationality is affected by actions of parents; and which parents citizenship applies to
the child comes under naturalization law. What happens when the child is born in another
country, or to one alien parent? What happens when the child lives as one nationality, but before
reaching the age of majority wishes to assume the other? This is also naturalization and
includes numerous conditions and requirements as part of the legal 'process.'
Minor vs Happersett (1875) declared, in a case involving a womans right to vote, it was
'never doubted' that the child of two U.S. citizen parents was a natural born citizen. And to this
day it is still only that particular birth circumstance (even if born outside the U.S.) that produces a
citizen naturally, without having to remove dual nationality of the minor with naturalization
law.

The Evolution of Naturalization Law and Dual Nationality

The 14th Amendment is best-known for its born in the United States and equal protection
clauses. However, it was written specifically for children born of freed black slaves. Because the
father had no national allegiance or citizenship to confer to his children (See Dred Scott, and the
1866 Civil Rights Act) the legislature had to rely on, for the first time in U.S. naturalization law,
birth on U.S. soil (jus soli).
The 19th and 20th century saw changes in the institution of marriage, racial inclusion, and
legitimization of nullius fillius (children of unwed mothers) that required broader applications of
sanguinity (inheritance by blood) if not a complete departure from it (1898). The application of
'equal protection' to sanguinity, until then only through the husband, created the previously
unheard of concept of Dual Nationality.

Womens Claims to Equal Citizenship Rights 1922-1940

Yale Law Journal Volume 123 Number 7, p. 2134-2573 Illegitimate Borders: Jus Sanguinis
Citizenship and the Legal Construction of Family, Race, and Nation, Kristin A. Collins
The reaction of some committee members to womens claims to gender equality
reveals a strong commitment to those traditional modes of regulating nationality.
For example, in 1922, Richard Flournoythen an assistant solicitor in the
Department of State and later a member of the interdepartmental committee
found the idea that a married woman would maintain her American citizenship
upon marriage to a foreigner very objectionable on the ground that it was
obviously a direct blow at the principle of family unitya reference to the
principles of coverture[1] that resulted in womens loss of independent civil
identity upon marriage. In 1934 Congress passed a statute that gave American
women the ability to transmit citizenship to their foreign-born children with no
explicit racial limitations.

A Womans Loss of U.S. Citizenship: Laws of Coverture

Prior to modern womens rights, when a woman married a man she assumed a subordinate legal
status to that of the husband. Before todays no-contest divorce, communal property, and
intestate succession laws, inheritance laws didnt give a woman equal rights to property; they
favored the husbands side of the family.

In the same light, if marrying an alien she lost her U.S. citizenship. So, from the time of the
framers and into the 1930s, it was understood that only a U.S. citizen husband produced U.S.
citizen children, natural born through sanguinity, father and mother together.
American women who married an alien would not only lose U.S. citizenship but produce alien
children (1922):
369. (a) A woman who has lost her United States citizenship by reason of her marriage to
an alien eligible to citizenship or by reason of the loss of United State citizenship by her
husband may, if eligible to citizenship and if she has not acquired any other nationality
by affirmative action, be naturalized upon full and complete compliance with all
requirements of the naturalization laws, with the following exceptions: . . . (Repealed by
act Oct. 14, 1940)
The 19th Amendment finally extended the vote to women in 1920. The 1922 Cable Act permitted
repatriation to the United States if an American woman lost citizenship by marrying a foreigner.
Her children would then gain U.S. citizenship with her. Other challenges were based on the 'equal
rights clause' of the 14th Amendment, successfully comparing Coverture to slavery.
Over time, the legal doctrine of Coverture was finally eliminated. However, the retention of premarital U.S. citizenship created a bifurcated marriage, a dichotomy of nationalities requiring new
naturalization laws to determine the child's nationality and citizenship throughout the course of
the marriage/dissolution, until the child reached the age of majority. In fact, Obama had three
nationalities from birth to reaching adulthood.
However, to this day a natural born citizen must be interpreted how the framers chose it to
mean, and why; children of U.S. citizens without alienage had no possible foreign allegiance or
affiliation. As specifically expressed by John Jay to George Washington, this was to avoid foreign
intrigue from the highest office of the land. Only a U.S. citizen 'naturally born' was immune from
changes in naturalization law, natural law versus naturalization.
1933 Statute for Child Born Outside the United States Not a Citizen at Birth
Any child hereafter born out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States
whose father or mother or both at the time of the birth of such child is a citizen of
the United States, is declared to be a citizen of the United States; but the rights of
citizenship shall not descend to any such child unless the citizen father or citizen
mother, as the case may be, has resided in the United Sates previous to the birth
of such child. In cases where one of the parents is an alien, the right of
citizenship shall not descend unless the child comes to the United
States and reside therein for at least five years continuously
immediately previous to his eighteenth birthday, and unless, within six
months after the childs twenty-first birthday, he or she shall take an oath of
allegiance to the United States of America as prescribed by the Immigration
and Naturalization Service of the Department of Labor. Am. June 10, 1933, Ex.
Or. 6166, 14; and May 24, 1934, c. 344, 1. 48 Stat. 797. [emphasis added]
The term citizenship at birth was not yet applied in the law.

Ted Cruz was Born December 22, 1970

Finally, the phrase citizen at birth is used in the law.

The laws grew to accommodate women giving birth to children with dual nationality; specifically
the 1940 statutes were repealed and replaced in 1952, 8 U.S.C. 1401(a)(7) [INA 301(a)(7)] as
originally enacted by Act of June 27, 1952;
The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth:
[A] person born outside the geographical limits of the United States and its outlying possessions
of parents, one of whom is a non-citizen, and the other a citizen of the United States who, prior to
the birth of such person, was physically present in the United States or its outlying possessions for
a period or periods totally not less than ten years, at least five of which were after attaining the
age of fourteen years.
That law was liberalized and codified in 1986 as INA 301(g); 8 U.S.C. 1401(g).
Through womens rights and equality protection under the law, the concept of sanguinity was
extended through the mother as it was, previously, only through the father; however dual
nationality was a concept completely foreign to the framers and is, as you can see, the reason for
the vast body of naturalization law necessary to remove any alienage created in a child at birth, or
even temporary loss of citizenship due to unintentional expatriation of the mother. Only a natural
born citizen, a child of two U.S. citizen parents, is immune from and undefined by naturalization
law.