Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley speaks during a campaign stop, Saturday, Dec. 30, 2023, in Coralville, Iowa. Haley is eligible for the presidency, despite claims otherwise on social media. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
Published January 19, 2024
Nikki Haley, the daughter of two non-citizens, is patently ineligible to serve as President or Vice President under Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution
The following analysis is a detailed response to critiques of an article I wrote earlier this month that garnered national attention, and was even Truthed by President Trump, shedding light on Nikki Haley’s ineligibility to serve as President or Vice President under the Constitution. My article was published originally on my Substack and American Greatness, and was titled “The Constitution Absolutely Prohibits Nikki Haley From Being President Or Vice President.”
By Paul Ingrassia
As A Threshold Matter, Nikki Haley, The Daughter Of Two Non-Citizens, Must Provie Proof That Her Parents Were Lawful Residents When She Was Born
As we head into the New Hampshire Republican primary, the presidential field has consolidated around three major candidates: Donald Trump, the frontrunner by wide margins, Nikki Haley, and Ron DeSantis. With Vivek Ramaswamy’s distant fourth place finish in Iowa and subsequent endorsement of the 45th President, Trump’s edge in New Hampshire looks insurmountable. Recent polling suggests that he commands an outright majority of all New Hampshire GOP voters, meaning that even if all the remaining candidates dropped out and rallied around a single challenger to Trump, their collective effort would still fail – without, perhaps, outside help from Democrats and Independents. With recent reports that Ron DeSantis’ War Room has been dissolved, and all the staff being laid off in the aftermath of Iowa’s disaster, it seems to have proven true Nikki Haley’s post-Iowa declaration that the Republican Primary has now become “a two person race.”
That is, unless the Constitution has any say.
If the only two remaining viable candidates are, in fact, Trump and Haley, it should actually just be a one-person race. That is because of the two, Donald Trump is the only candidate still running who qualifies as a natural-born citizen under the Constitution’s Eligibility Clause in Article II, Section 1. Unlike Nikki Haley, President Trump’s two parents were both citizens at the time he was born on American soil, in Queens, New York, in 1946. His father was a citizen by birthright, his mother was naturalized – and completed the naturalization process years before Trump’s birth. Therefore, he meets the Constitutional standard for eligibility.
Nikki Haley, on the other hand, is a much different story. Nikki Haley was born “Nimarata Randhawa” in Bamberg, South Carolina, in 1972. But at the time of her birth, neither one of her parents were American citizens. As recently unearthed by investigative journalist Laura Loomer, both “Haley’s parents were Indian immigrants who did not become U.S. citizens until after her birth in 1972. Her father, Ajit Randhawa, became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1978, Haley’s office said. Her mother, Raj Randhawa, became a U.S. citizen in 2003, a year before Haley won a seat in the S.C. House.”
Loomer’s report further states her inability to confirm whether Haley’s parents actually ever went through the naturalization process to receive citizenship. This, on its own, is quite worrying. But even if one or both of Haley’s parents ultimately did become naturalized citizens subsequent to Haley’s birth, Haley has never demonstrated proof that her parents were lawful residents at the time she was born.
Critically, nobody seems to have answers as to whether Ajit and Raj Randhawa were lawfully permitted to reside in the United States at the time of Haley’s birth at all! Even if they were, what was the status of their lawful residence? Were they here on student visas? Some kind of employment visa? Whatever might have been the 1972-equivalent of an H-1B, something else? Nobody has answers to these critical questions.
Unless proven otherwise, one cannot be at fault for asking – based on the alarmingly scant information available on a leading presidential candidate – whether Haley’s parents were unlawfully residing as illegal aliens? This would make Nikki Haley a so-called “anchor baby,” flouting the letter and spirit of the Constitution in the most obnoxious way possible.
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SOURCE: www.thegatewaypundit.com
RELATED: Fact Check: US-born Nikki Haley is eligible to be president based on citizenship
Published January 13, 2024
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SOURCE: ww.reuters.com
RELATED: False claims question Haley’s eligibility to serve as US president
Published January 3, 2024
CLAIM: Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley is ineligible to be president because her parents were not U.S. citizens at the time of her birth.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. Haley is a natural-born U.S. citizen who is eligible to serve as president. The former ambassador to the United Nations was born on Jan. 20, 1972, in Bamberg, South Carolina, according to information on her official website when she was governor of the state.
THE FACTS: With the Iowa caucuses just two weeks away, some on social media are erroneously claiming that Haley, who served as governor of South Carolina from 2011 to 2017, cannot legally hold the country’s highest office.
“Nikki Haley is Constitutionally ineligible to be President….or Vice President,” reads one post on X, formerly Twitter, that had received approximately 6,900 likes and shares as of Tuesday. The post links to an article that argues Haley is ineligible because her parents were not U.S. citizens when she was born.
In her 2012 autobiography, Haley wrote that her parents “were born in the Punjab region of India.” Haley’s office told South Carolina newspaper The State in 2015, when she was governor, that her father, Ajit Randhawa, became a U.S. citizen in 1978 — six years after Haley’s birth — while her mother, Raj Randhawa, was naturalized in 2003.
But experts agree Haley is a legitimate candidate as defined by the Constitution, regardless of her parents’ citizenship status. Her birth in Bamberg makes her a natural-born citizen, one of three qualifications to hold the U.S. presidency.
“Having been born in South Carolina, she is clearly a ‘natural born citizen,’ without regard to the fact that her parents were immigrants,” Geoffrey Stone, a professor of Law at the University of Chicago who is an expert on constitutional law, told The Associated Press.
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SOURCE: www.apnews.com
