I remember reading about Churchill when I was a youngster and being baffled and offended that the English had rejected Churchill during peacetime and only called upon him when the situation was dire. I wonder if they argued like this? "He has no administrative experience", "he only has administrative experience", "is he even an Englishman, his mother being an American and all". Luckily for the English, they got past that and let Churchill lead them.
Churchill! Yes, an interesting story there, the British statesman and leader, born outside of the US to an American mother.
I wonder why no one ever considered Sir Winston to be an American natural born Citizen? Certainly many would have supported his candidacy for the Presidency! In fact, Churchill was not even an American citizen.
There must have been something
different when Churchill was born in England on November 30, 1874 to the American mother, Jeanette Jerome, than when Ted Cruz was born on December 22, 1970 to an American mother, Eleanor Darragh Wilson, in Canada.
What could that difference have been?
The difference is that the
statute (
McCarran-Walter Act, or INA of 1952) that grants Mr. Cruz's claim to US Citizenship wasn't passed until 1952. (Poor Winston!)
Before the INA, a variety of statutes governed immigration law but were not organized in one location. The McCarran-Walter bill of 1952, Public Law No. 82-414, collected and codified many existing provisions and reorganized the structure of immigration law. The Act has been amended many times over the years, but is still the basic body of immigration law.
So, it is easy to see why, one person with very similar birth circumstances as another, has a claim to US citizenship, and the other doesn't. It is because a naturalization statute existed when one person was born, and didn't exist when the other person was born. When you look at these two examples, it become very clear that citizenship by statute, even when granted at birth via collective naturalization, is very different that natural born Citizenship, because natural born Citizenship, as a Natural Law construct, is
not dependent on the existence of any statute!
(But all was not lost for Sir Winston! The United States so appreciated his valiant allied leadership, that he was made an Honorary Citizen of the United States in 1963!)
