Hoda Muthana

Can ANYONE tell me (or anyone else), exactly WTH is “a legal basis to return to the country” of one’s citizenship/origin?

Asking for a friend, you see.

Hoda Muthana, seated in the foreground, participates in a broadcasting class at Hoover High School in Hoover, Alabama, on August 18, 2011. (Image by Beverly Taylor/The Birmingham News)

Seriously.

If you’re born in the United States, it’s territories or protectorates, then you’re AUTOMATICALLY an American citizen. That includes Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, all U.S. Military bases worldwide, and here’s the list of U.S. protectorates:

American Samoa
Guam
Palau – While an autonomous nation, the United States provides defense, funding, social services, and the American dollar is the currency of exchange.
Puerto Rico
US Virgin Islands
Midway Atoll, Bikini Atoll, Johnston Atoll, Baker, Howard, Wake – all uninhabited islands

No questions asked… except by GOP whack-jobs, like “birthers” and other conspiracy theorists, who hallucinated after drinking the Libertarian kook-ade and concocted some hare-brained scheme to assert Barack Obama was born somewhere else, other than Hawaii.

So, yeah… New Jersey must not be a state, anymore.

And Alabama… well, it’s a state of mind – and a very sad one, at that.

Thank gawd for Mississippi, eh?

So it turns out that US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, aka “Pompous Ass #2,” recently (as in yesterday, 20February2019) wrote that “Ms. Hoda Muthana is not a U.S. citizen and will not be admitted into the United States. She does not have any legal basis, no valid U.S. passport, no right to a passport, nor any visa to travel to the United States. We continue to strongly advise all U.S. citizens not to travel to Syria.”

So, let’s parse this statement, bit by bit, piece by piece.

Hoda Muthana with child

Claim #1.) “Ms. Hoda Muthana is not a U.S. citizen…”

False, Ms. Hoda Muthana was born in New Jersey, thus she is an American citizen. While there are circumstances and situations about almost every law, there are also some with this one, and they are addressed toward the end of this entry.

Claim #2.) “…and will not be admitted into the United States.”

We’ll see about that. Already, her rights have been violated, most notably as Equal Protection Under Law, and Due Process.

Claim #3.) “She does not have any legal basis…”

Exactly WTH does THAT mean, eh?

What’s a “legal basis” to be a U.S. Citizen? We know what is required to be a U.S. Citizen – be born in America or it’s protectorates, or become Naturalized if not. If born overseas to U.S. citizen parents, one’s parents MUST apply for a CRBA (Consular Report of a Birth Abroad) to validate and verify that the child was born to American citizen(s), which would thus make the child an American Citizen. If the parent(s) failed to apply for a CRBA in a timely manner, the child would forfeit all rights to American Citizenship. As an aside, Ted Cruz has no U.S. Passport, because there is NO RECORD that his parents ever applied for a CRBA. Poor Ted.

Claim #4.) “…no valid U.S. passport…”

“Validity” of passports, or other time-dated permitting documents, such as driver licenses, are considered “valid” up to, and including, the “date of expiration.” Thus, to have departed the United States, she had to have a United States Passport. And, it could’ve expired during her absence. They’re “valid” for 10 years. The U.S. Secretary of State’s website says in part that, “By law, U.S. citizens, including dual nationals, must use a U.S. passport to enter and leave the United States.” So, if she departed, then she had to have had a U.S. Passport.

Hoda Muthana

Claim #5.) “…no right to a passport…”

She had to have had a U.S. Passport to depart the United States, which she obviously did, so for Pompous Ass to claim that… well, he’s a pompous ass, and has already violated her rights, as enumerated above.

Claim #6.) “…nor any visa to travel to the United States.”

American Citizens do NOT need “any visa to travel to the United States.” What an ignorant statement!

Claim #7.) ” We continue to strongly advise all U.S. citizens not to travel to Syria.”

Yeah, well… American citizens traveled to Cuba via Canada before relations between Cuba and the United States began warming in recent history. And the operative word is “advise,” because that’s all it is – advice – which can be accepted, or rejected.

This administration is utterly inept.

That is all.

The fact of their corruption is only slightly secondary to gross ineptitude.

The “failing” New York Times gives the best explanation of the events in question by writing that “Ms. Muthana says she applied for and received a United States passport before leaving for Turkey.

“Ms. Muthana’s father was a Yemeni diplomat, and children born in the United States to active diplomats are not bestowed birthright citizenship, since diplomats are under the jurisdiction of their home countries.”

Charlie Swift, Director of the Constitutional Law Center for Muslims in America, who is representing her family, said, “That law does not apply in Ms. Muthana’s case,” because she was born a month after her father was discharged from his position as a United Nations diplomat.

Mr. Swift also said Ms. Muthana had been issued two American passports: One when she was a child, and a renewal for which she applied for herself just before she left for Syria. And in the case of the first passport, in order to overcome any jurisdictional challenge to her American citizenship, he said that her father had provided a letter issued from the United Nations which proved that he had been discharged from diplomatic service before she was born.

“Hassan Shibly, a lawyer with the Council on American-Islamic Relations Florida who is advising the family, provided a birth certificate for Ms. Muthana that showed she was born in Hackensack, N.J., on October 28, 1994.”

Mr. Swift also said that after she had joined the Islamic State, Ms. Muthana’s family received a letter from the U.S. Department of State indicating that her passport had been revoked, whereupon her father sent to the U.S. government evidence of his non-diplomatic status at the time of his daughter’s birth, but did not receive a response.

“David Leopold, a former President of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said that if Ms. Muthana had a valid American passport, she had an “irrebuttable presumption of citizenship in this country. If the passport was a legitimate passport and she was a U.S. citizen, nothing that Pompeo says takes away her citizenship.”

He also acknowledged that if her father was an accredited diplomat when she was born, then Ms. Muthana would have been a permanent resident — not a citizen – and that that case the United States government could have grounds to bar her from re-entry, but she could be eligible for a Due Process hearing. But again, her father had provided to American authorities a letter from the United Nations stating that at the time of her birth, he had already been discharged from diplomatic service at least one month before her birth in Hackensack, New Jersey, on October 28, 1984.

Bottom line…

Hoda Muthana is an undisputed and natural-born American Citizen.

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

– John Adams, statement in “Argument in Defense of the Soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials,” December 1770, US diplomat & politician (1735 – 1826)

Facts are pesky things, you know.