OBAMA AND CHESTER ARTHUR: UNCONSTITUTIONAL PRESIDENCIES?

Posted By on December 21st, 2009

December 21, 2009

America’s Two Unconstitutional Presidents

Dianna C. Cotter

Students of history know that history repeats itself. Today we are reliving the past of 1880s. The similarities between the 21st President and the 44th are startling, and the ramifications are huge.
 
President Chester A. Arthur was the son of an Irish immigrant, William Arthur, and Vermonter, Malvina Stone. Arthur would tragically assume the Presidency upon the assassination of President Garfield in 1881 and become the 21st President. President Arthur was successful in keeping the secret of his heritage, and he died shortly after leaving the White House November 18, 1886. He served honorably and well as President of the United States, but was not Constitutionally Qualified for the Office of either Vice President or President, and set a precedent by which it would happen again.
 
During the campaign of 1880, questions were asked about Chester’s birth place, but just as today, those doing the research were looking in the wrong direction. Arthur’s father, William Arthur was a British citizen at the time of the future President’s birth. Born in Ballymena, Ireland in 1796 he would not become a Naturalized citizen until August 31st, 1843. No one ever checked into his immigration status at the time of his son’s birth. Chester Arthur, 14 at the time his father was naturalized, and would surely have known this. Sound somewhat familiar?
 
 
 
This document and its relevance have only recently been discovered. The President himself would not help matters any, he burned nearly all of his records and papers before he died in November 1886, a year and a half after leaving office.
 
A lawyer and scholar by the name of George D. Collins Esq. wrote an article regarding citizenship during Arthur’s term, that had the President seen it, would have concerned him. “Are Persons born Within the United States Ipso Facto Citizens thereof?” was published in the American Law Review in Sept. /Oct. 1884. Collins thesis reverberates through history: “… are persons born within the United States, whose fathers at the time of such birth were aliens, citizens there of?” Collins relies on two sources in particular for his answer.
 
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” –14th Amendment
 
 
He draws upon “The Law of Nations” by Emerich Vattel written in 1758, on which the U.S. Constitution was largely based. Collins states in his article, the term “jurisdiction thereof” means “not subject to any foreign power”, citing Section 1992 in Section 1 of the new 14th Amendment. He quotes Vattel:
 
The native or natural citizens are those born in the country of parents who are citizens. As the society can not exist and perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers and succeed to all their rights. The society is supposed to desire this in consequence of what it owes to its own preservation, and it is presumed as a matter of course that each citizen on entering into society reserves to his children the right of becoming members of it. -Vattel
 
 
Collins concludes:
 
Birth, therefore, does not ipso facto confer citizenship, and it is essential in order that a person be a native or natural born citizen of the United States, that his father be at the time of the birth of such person a citizen thereof, or in the case he be illegitimate, that his mother be a citizen thereof at the time of such birth. – Collins
 
 
Had Collins known that President Arthur’s father was not a naturalized citizen at the time of Arthur’s birth, he would have correctly concluded that the President was not a natural born citizen and not eligible for the office. It was considered a matter of National security; the Commander in Chief should not be subject to any foreign power, and for that reason the “natural born” distinction is made.
 
Today, a direct and startlingly similar situation exists between President Arthur and President Obama. The 44th President was also born to a British citizen, not a naturalized citizen of the United States. For the same reasons both Presidents were not eligible for the office, the only difference lay in Barack Obama’s public admission of his father’s status:
 
When Barack Obama Jr. was born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Kenya was a British colony, still part of the United Kingdom’s dwindling empire. As a Kenyan native, Barack Obama Sr. was a British subject whose citizenship status was governed by The British Nationality Act of 1948. That same act governed the status of Obama Sr.’s children.
 
Since Sen. Obama has neither renounced his U.S. citizenship nor sworn an oath of allegiance to Kenya, his Kenyan citizenship automatically expired on August 4, 1982. –Fight the Smears
 
This quote illustrates four things very clearly. First, the President is the son of a British Kenyan. Second, his citizenship in Kenya expired in 1982, meaning that another country had a claim on the President from birth to 23 and he could choose to keep it as an adult. The third is unstated; the President’s British citizenship can still be formalized. The fourth issue it states very clearly. At birth, Barack Obama was subject to the power of a foreign nation, “The British Nationality Act of 1948. That same act governed the status of Obama Sr.’s children.” and therefore was not at any time a natural born citizen due to his triple nationality status, and he knows it.
 
The President has spent millions of dollars fighting various court cases across the country, not so much to keep his past hidden, but to keep people focused on what they think he is hiding. What is relevant is what he has admitted out in the open. The President at birth was an American citizen, a British citizen and a Kenyan citizen. At no time in his life has he ever been a natural born citizen of the United States. Barack Obama was a subject of two separate foreign powers in the instant of his birth. 
 
Attorneys Leo Donofrio and Steve Pidgeon have been retained by a group of Chrysler dealers who lost their franchises in the Chrysler bankruptcy sale. Quo Warranto is one of 2 ways to remove a sitting President, and is being filed on behalf of the Auto Dealers who had their dealerships taken from them in the summer of 2009, and bankruptcy motion actions are being filed in the Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York. It is expected that as many as 50 to 100 Auto Dealers may join lead Plaintiff James Anderer in the suits.
 
History has been known to repeat itself, it remains to be seen if this repeat will leave an unqualified President in office or not.
 
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Dianna Cotter is a married mother of three, and a Golden Key International Honor Society student at American Military University. This article was originally published here. She can be contacted at: cotter.d.c@gmail.com.
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