The Birthers are Back

I bet you thought those crazy birthers were over. Well, think again. But this time they're attacking Republicans.

Last week the Washington Post reported that Marco Rubio "embellished" his family history, misrepresenting the actual date they emigrated to the United States from Cuba in his public speeches. His standard narrative had been that they came to the US in 1959. In reality, they arrived in 1956. They weren't political refugees fleeing Castro's communist revolution, they were economic refugees from a country that was run by a corrupt right-wing dictator named Fulgencio Batista who had seized power in a coup.

Rubio's parents arrived in the US on May 27, 1956. His father got a Social Security number in New York that same year. Fidel Castro had been preparing for revolution, training in Mexico and raising money in the United States at that time. He didn't arrive in Cuba for his revolution until Dec. 2, 1956, and the revolution took years to complete.

According to the Post's story, Rubio's parents went back and forth between the US and Cuba several times, having extended stays in Cuba until as late as March, 1961. Rubio was born in 1971. His parents didn't petition for naturalization until 1975.

Nothing about this history is anything for Rubio to be ashamed of. The only thing he's guilty of is obscuring the facts that his parents weren't people who fled Castro's communist revolution; they actually tried returning to Cuba and just didn't like it.

[Rubio] said of his parents: “They were from Cuba. They wanted to live in Cuba again. They tried to live in Cuba again, and the reality of what it was made that impossible.”

In 2006, on the eve of his rise to speaker of the Florida House, Rubio told an audience that “in January of 1959, a thug named Fidel Castro took power in Cuba and countless Cubans were forced to flee and come here, many — most — here to America. When they arrived, they were welcomed by the most compassionate people on all the Earth.” 

Now, I can see why Rubio wouldn't be really proud of the fact that his parents waffled for five years about whether they really wanted to live in the United States. According to the Post:

In Florida, being connected to the post-revolution exile community gives a politician cachet that could never be achieved by someone identified with the pre-Castro exodus, a group sometimes viewed with suspicion.

Why with suspicion? Perhaps because people who would eventually support Castro were leaving then were hounded by a right-wing thug named Fulgencio Batista. In turn, many of the people who fled Castro's revolution had been allied with Batista, who by all accounts was no better than Castro.

But the birthers think this disqualifies Marco Rubio from the presidency. He was born in the USA, but since his parents weren't citizens they believe he's not "natural born." Compare that to Barack Obama, who was born in Hawaii of an American mother and a Kenyan father. Or John McCain, who was born in Panama of American parents. Or Donald Trump, who was born of an American father and a Scottish mother. Or my father, who was born in Wisconsin of a Norwegian father who never became a US citizen and an American-born mother, whose Norwegian parents were unnaturalized immigrants. (My dad is a died-in-the-wool birther.)

The birthers think that Trump is a real American because his mother was naturalized before Trump was born. But was his mother naturalized just because she married an American? Does that really count?

Obviously all of these men are natural-born citizens, since they're all born in the USA or born of American parents and claimed the United States as their only country of citizenship.

The relevant clause in the Constitution reads:

No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

The purpose of this clause is to make sure that the president is a "real" American and not some foreign pretender. But look at how lax the requirement is. The Constitution was adopted in 1789. That means that a British sleeper agent who emigrated to New York in 1775 and became a citizen in 1788 could have become president. If "natural born" was so important to the founders, the Constitution would have left it at that.

All of the men above have a far better claim of being a "real" American than someone who'd just been a resident for 14 years in 1789. Obviously, the birthers are ascribing much more rigor to "natural born" than the founders intended.

Section 8 of the Constitution also gives Congress the authority to pass certain laws:

To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

The birthers bicker about what "natural born" means, insisting that it has to mean what founders might have meant two centuries ago (as if all the founders agreed on everything). But laws passed by Congress and precedents set by the courts have ruled that all of these men are US citizens and eligible to be president.

The "original intent" of the framers is now a moot point. They gave Congress the authority to pass laws and the courts to rule on them. If they had intended for there to be no changes to any of these notions, they wouldn't have bothered to create a mechanism for passing new legislation and for courts to judge them.

After all, the original intent of the founders was that white men should be able to hold black slaves. Or do the birthers want to bring that back too?