I see mixed reports – some say she never was, some say she was. Some note that she was listed as a Canadian voter, which is only allowed for citizens, others say that isn’t definitive.
The Cruz folks are claiming she was never actually a Canadian citizen.
And the OP has been answered - an attorney in Houston has filed suit challenging Cruz’s eligibility.
The consensus is that it will be quickly thrown out due to lack of standing, as was mentioned in this thread.
I’ve been involve in the preparation of voter lists for provincial elections. I would say that there is certainly ground for error. 
Plus, even in this computerised age where we register to vote simply by ticking a box on our income tax forms, two federal elections running I didn’t make it onto the voters’ list and had to swear myself in to vote.
I wouldn’t take the voters list as proof of anything. 
Right, Maclean’s magazine has published an article today which asserts that Cruz’ father took out Canadian citizenship in 1974, four years after Ted was born. Irrelevant in any event, since his father was not a US citizen at the time Ted was born.
Ted’s claim to US citizenship comes from his mother. The article states:
The article doesn’t explain what they’re basing that on.
I, for one, would not even consider arguing with that.
I hear you, bro.
Ever since I was a pre-adolescent I have been fascinated by the ephemeral nature of the human condition. What starts out as triumph soon becomes debased into a carnival of defeat, leaving only a sense of nihilism and the dawn of a new beginning.
A wise decision for sure there **Exapno **old buddy. One is awestruck by the shimmering … impervious magnificence of it all. Colorless green dreams waking furiously indeed.
What if Congress passed an “interpretive act” defining natural born citizen as any person, anywhere in the world, regardless of current citizenship?
What if Congress passed an act which says that 35 years old actually means 18 years old, or that “equal protection” or “due process” does not mean gay marriage or abortion?
IOW, “interpretive acts” sounds a lot like a violation of separation of powers as it is up to the Supreme Court to interpret ambiguous provisions in the Constitution.
The 1790 Congress in the very first citizenship and naturalization law had a definition for Natural Born but very shortly passed a new such law in which the phrase was nowhere to be found and that has been the case ever since, and had not been an issue until very recently.
The way the doctrine that SCOTUS set forth in the Insular Cases – that these are possessions, that belong to but are not an integral part of the Nation – has been applied in practice, is that Congress gets to legislate for the unincorporated territories either generally or individually and if the latter then what it does for one does not bind what it may do for the others.
Being born only “under the jurisdiction” of the US does not automatically grant citizenship – the population of each unincorporated territory that has a civil home-rule government started off as noncitizen nationals and advened to US citizenship by a separate legislative path until now in 2016 each of them (except for American Samoa) is treated as “home soil” for the purpose of birth citizenship. (Puerto Rico example: 1898-1899 inhabitants were Spanish subjects under US occupation; 1900-1917 were US non-citizen nationals. In March 1917 the population was converted to US citizens en-masse by Act of Congress. BUT it was not until January 1941 that birth in PR by itself meant US citizenship; in between 1917 and 1941 you had to be born to a citizen parent)
I think of this as being analogous to McCain’s situation. They were not U.S. citizens at birth, but became U.S. citizens afterward because of the circumstances of their birth.
It would have been an interesting question if anyone born in Puerto Rico under these circumstances had attempted to run for president. Would they have been considered natural born?
Politically I think the typical R voter considers the former canal zone to be far more naturally US soil in perpetuity even today than they will ever consider PR to be anything properly associated with the real USA.
The law is the same as you say. So if this hypothetical PR candidate’s controversy was to be handled through the courts the answer ought to have been the same.
The politics lean the other way completely. I also suspect that if Cruz had been born and lived in Italy or Guatemala (or heaven forfend, China, Russia, or Saudi Arabia) the whole controversy around him would be playing out very differently now.
Plenty of people are willing to say that Cruz’ Canada is like McCain’s Canal Zone. A technical difference that doesn’t really matter. Close enough, good enough. And in so doing they show their true colors.
That would have been a curious thing and it would have definitely depended on the point in time when the question were raised.
Plus there is the additional question of whether due to the Insular Cases doctrine – “belonging but not a part of” – citizenship in the unincorporated territory does not proceed from the 14th amendment. The 14th refers to people “born or naturalized IN the United States”; but all other instances of citizenship by birth, even before the Amendment’s passage, proceed from the various successive Nationality Acts and Organic Acts and as mentioned in an article cited in one of the other Cruz threads, that includes born-abroad jus sanguinis citizens like him and people who believe citizenship-at-birth is not enough seem to be saying that the definition of “Natural Born” is the 14th Amendment’s “born…in” subclause, with “in the US” interpreted restrictively to mean the States, DC, and Incorporated Territory when it exists.
Here would (for me) be what settles it. Is Ted Cruz currently a US citizen? Did he have to go through any naturalization process to get that citizenship?
For you and I, who hold that “natural born citizen” = citizen by birth, that would settle it. For others, not so. Birthers seem to have a particular set of requirements, which seems to include both birth on home soil and that there be no possible elegibility for another citizenship jurisdiction to apply. To some of them, the consular document of birth of a child of a US citizen abroad is some sort of naturalization paper. As mentioned earlier one wonders what happens if the person is born IN the US to two US citizens, but Dad immigrated from one of those countries that insists all their nationals and immediate descendants remain so whether they like it or not.
And what did it say? They’d more likely know what it was intended to mean.
I remember some warning in Canada that some citizens (Greece at the time) were liable to be detained and sent to do military service back in the 1970’s. I believe it only applied as a warning to people who immigrated as young boys born in Greece and did not realize they were still required to do mandatory military service. Being a long-time naturalized Canadian was no defense against being forced on arrival to do military conscription. I don’t recall if the same applied to Israel. It was an issue with the draft in the USA too. I don’t think any of these issues applied to children born in Canada, just people who emigrated as children. (Although it was probably not a good idea to apply for a Greek passport based on parentage and show up in Greece as a 20-year-old?)
I actually tend to believe the 1st. Congress were quite likely to be winging it and pulling things out of their silk breeches since they were doing the shakedown cruise as it were.
Looked it up (PDF - bottom of first page) and oddly enough in this context, it defined it only vis-a-vis the children of US citizens born abroad.
(with an condition to the effect that the father must have been a resident in the US at some point).
We are left to presume that t also meant those born to citizens *within *the limits of the US since *that *has been universally accepted as counting all along. But it does mean that the founders DID contemplate that the children of citizens temporarily abroad would count as “natural born” citizens.
During the time that law existed, yes. But the fact that it was repealed equally suggests that Congress did not want to retain that definition.
But do you agree with my point above? Why should Congress and not the courts be permitted to define “natural born citizen,” a constitutional provision?
Congress cannot pass a law saying that “due process of law” or “equal protection of the law” does not apply to same sex marriage, agreed? Why then could it define “natural born citizen” in a way it chooses?
Sure they can… And if the president signs it and no one challenges it in court, it would even stand and be the law of the land.