Cruz and Natural Born Citizen

I searched this forum and GD but to my surprise I could not find a thread on this. He was born in Canada to a Cuban father and an American mother. He, therefore, is a naturalized citizen of the USA, but also of Cuba and Canada, depending upon the laws of those two countries. He has announced his candidacy for the office of the President of the USA. Must he renounce his other citizenships?

Cruz already renounced his Canadian citizenship

Also, he was never a Cuban citizen

He’s not a naturalized US citizen, which involves a process that takes place after birth. He is a natural born US citizen due to his mother being a US citizen. The two phrases are different and distinct.

I admit, it makes no sense to me, why he can run and a naturalized citizen can not. Honestly, the whole “natural born” citizen crap should be stricken anyway. It should be “citizen, who has lived in the US for X years”. X being a lot of years for President.

The only question is whether his parents reported his birth to the local US consulate when he was born in Calgary. If not, there’s still a question.

What about these threads?

Setting the record straight on Americans born overseas and the presidency?

Is Ted Cruz Canadian?

Ted Cruz abandons his Canadian political ambitions

Is it law or SOP that dual citizens can’t become President/PM?

I’m going to call the kettle black: Let’s see the birth certificate!

When the Constitution was written there was a serious fear of some foreign nobleman infiltrating the young republic’s political system and establishing himself as an absentee ruler.

The rule can be changed by amendment but nobody’s really that interested in doing it. Passing constitutional amendments is a lot of work.

I don’t believe this has any bearing on whether he was a natural born citizen. My impression was that it just makes gathering the documentation more difficult. But as long as he can demonstrate that his mother was a US citizen at the time of his birth then it’s not something that would require naturalization.

I completely agree.

As to the OP, Cruz is a natural-born citizen. He did not have to be naturalized. Those are the only two options.

As it stands right now it is sensibly interpreted to mean “a citizen by birth according to the laws”, which was clarified some years back for Senator McCain, who was born while his father was deployed to Panama, and earlier for Senator Goldwater who was born in Arizona when it was incorporated territory but before it was a state. Since the actual US Nationality law does not mention the phrase “natural born” anywhere but rather only refers to citizens “[by/at] birth”, and the Constitution just throws it out without explaining it, there’s always someone who wonders if that does not mean there’s some double-secret special condition such as that one had to have been “native” to an already-admitted state, or that both parents had to be themselves citizens, or some other such.

(Why nobody has ever bothered to explicitly enact a law that “For the purposes of application of Article II Section 1 of the Constitution, natural-born citizen means having citizenship by/at birth. No extraordinary evidence beyond those documents that are considered proof of citizenship for applying for a Security Clearance shall be required to prove this condition” is separate question).

Interesting opinion, but absolutely not a factual answer to the OP. As already noted, that clause is in the constitution for a reason. Whether that reason is still valid is up to the people, who have not made any significant effort to change it yet, let alone coming close to actually changing it.

Anaamika

Is your real name Arnold Schwarzenegger?

Ted Cruz has commented on his Canadian heritage:

:slight_smile:

So his father is from a communist country and he was born in a socialist country. Sounds like a Manchurian Candidate to me. Maybe he will pretend to be a far right wing nut so that far right wing nuts will be fooled.

Possibly. But it made perfect sense at the time. Very embarrassing to fight a war for independence and then have the (still-substantial) loyalist voting bloc elect George II as president.

No, no. He was born in Alberta. That means his political mileau moved slightly left when his family moved to Houston. :smiley:

ETA - our corporate tax rate is significantly lower than the US corporate tax rate. So who you calling socialist, eh? :dubious:

Part of the problem with this particular change is that it will never pass when it appears that it is intended to benefit a particular person who is presently viewed as a possible presidential candidate. When there is no such person, it is treated as a non-issue not worth the trouble of correcting, although there will probably be some prominent naturalized citizen on the political scene again in the future. The current “{Ted Cruz|Barack Obama|Ok, who’s next} isn’t a native born citizen” thing might be the best path to such a change if people get sick enough of seeing it played out repeatedly.

US corporate taxes actually paid are the lowest in the world for the richest corporations:

We can certainly hope so, but I doubt it will get any traction with Senator Nuts.