Yes, birthers, Ted Cruz IS a natural-born citizen of the U.S.

Lone Star Conservative ^ | Thursday, May 14, 2015 at 10:30 AM | Josh Painter

[Josh Painter]

This should not even be an issue any longer, but there are still some out there who didn't get the legal memo.

First, some history:

The origins of the Natural Born Citizenship Clause date back to a letter John Jay (who later authored several of the Federalist Papers and served as our first chief justice) wrote to George Washington, then president of the Constitutional Convention, on July 25, 1787. At the time, as Justice Joseph Story later explained in his influential Commentaries on the Constitution, many of the framers worried about “ambitious foreigners who might otherwise be intriguing for the office.” “Permit me to hint, whether it would not be wise & seasonable to provide a strong check to the admission of Foreigners into the administration of our national Government; and to declare expressly that the Command in chief of the American army shall not be given to nor devolve on, any but a natural born Citizen,” Jay wrote.

Washington thanked Jay for his hints in a reply dated September 2, 1787. Shortly thereafter, the natural-born citizenship language appeared in the draft Constitution the Committee of Eleven presented to the Convention. There is no record of any debate on the clause.

To make a long story short, the question boils down to a matter of intent:

While it is possible to trace the origins of the Natural Born Citizenship Clause, it is harder to determine its intended scope—who did the framers mean to exclude from the presidency by this language? The Naturalization Act of 1790 probably constitutes the most significant evidence available. Congress enacted this legislation just three years after the drafting of the Constitution, and many of those who voted on it had participated in the Constitutional Convention. The act provided that “children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond the sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural-born citizens.” There is no record of discussion of the term natural born citizen, but it is reasonable to conclude that the drafters believed that foreign-born children of American parents who acquired citizenship at birth could and should be deemed natural born citizens.

In conclusion:

What can we expect if Senator Cruz or another similarly situated candidate runs for president in 2016? Undoubtedly, the controversy will continue with passionate advocates on both sides of the issue. A scholarly consensus is emerging, however, that anyone who acquires citizenship at birth is natural born for purposes of Article II. This consensus rests on firm foundations. First, given Jay’s letter and the language of the 1790 naturalization act, it seems evident that the framers were worried about foreign princes, not children born to American citizens living abroad. Second, the 14-year residency requirement Article II also imposes as a presidential prerequisite ensures that, regardless of their place of birth, would-be presidents must spend a significant time living in the United States before they can run for office.

Concurring:

Two former top Justice Department lawyers say there is “no question” Ted Cruz is eligible for the presidency, in a new Harvard Law Review article that seeks to put to rest any doubt about the Texas Republican. “Despite the happenstance of a birth across the border, there is no question that Senator Cruz has been a citizen from birth and is thus a ‘natural born citizen’ within the meaning of the Constitution,” write Neal Katyal and Paul Clement in an article published March 11. “There are plenty of serious issues to debate in the upcoming presidential election cycle. The less time spent dealing with specious objections to candidate eligibility, the better.”

[...]

The Harvard Law Review article is notable because it is a bipartisan assessment that Cruz meets the Constitution’s requirement that the president be a “natural born citizen.” Katyal was an acting solicitor general in the Obama administration from May 2010 to June 2011. Clement was solicitor general from 2004 to 2008 in the Bush administration and is, perhaps, best known nationally among conservatives for arguing the case against President Obama’s health care law before the Supreme Court in 2012.

Katyal and Clement review the intent and meaning behind “natural born citizen,” going back to the Founding Fathers. The question about citizenship and presidential eligibility has also affected Barry Goldwater, George Romney and John McCain over the years — and all met the constitutional test.

Katyal and Clement conclude in their article:

As Congress has recognized since the Founding, a person born abroad to a U.S. citizen parent is generally a U.S. citizen from birth with no need for naturalization. And the phrase “natural born Citizen” in the Constitution encompasses all such citizens from birth. Thus, an individual born to a U.S. citizen parent — whether in California or Canada or the Canal Zone — is a U.S. citizen from birth and is fully eligible to serve as President if the people so choose. Finally, another bipartisan consensus:

Legal scholars are firm about Cruz’s eligibility. “Of course he’s eligible,” Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz tells National Review Online. “He’s a natural-born, not a naturalized, citizen.” Eugene Volokh, a professor at the UCLA School of Law and longtime friend of Cruz, agrees, saying the senator was “a citizen at birth, and thus a natural-born citizen — as opposed to a naturalized citizen, which I understand to mean someone who becomes a citizen after birth.” Federal law extends citizenship beyond those granted it by the 14th Amendment: It confers the privilege on all those born outside of the United States whose parents are both citizens, provided one of them has been “physically present” in the United States for any period of time, as well as all those born outside of the United States to at least one citizen parent who, after the age of 14, has resided in the United States for at least five years. Cruz’s mother, who was born and raised in Delaware, meets the latter requirement, so Cruz himself is undoubtedly an American citizen. No court has ruled what makes a “natural-born citizen,” but there appears to be a consensus that the term refers to those who gain American citizenship by birth rather than by naturalization — again, including Texas’s junior senator.

Case closed. Bye bye, birthers,

- JP

[precisionshootist]

"Let me ask you this. If the U.S. Constitution granted Congress the power to define natural-born citizen, would those citizenship statutes have more legal weight?"

Maybe so, but congress does not have the power to "define" anything in the Constitution as that would be changing or amending and that can only be done by Constitutional amendment.

We have never proposed an amendment to define NBC status although I do think in an article V convention that very issue needs to be addressed.

[BuckeyeTexan]

Really? And what piece of information convinced you otherwise? You must have seen something different that I haven't yet seen. I would like to know what it is, because all my research has yielded the opposite result.

I'd have to say that Rogers v. Bellei is what finally convinced me that it is more likely than not that statutory citizens at birth are natural-born citizens.

The Court cited Justice Gray's stipulation in Wong Kim Ark:

"But it [the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment] has not touched the acquisition of citizenship by being born abroad of American parents; and has left that subject to be regulated, as it had always been, by Congress, in the exercise of the power conferred by the Constitution to establish an uniform rule of naturalization."

In doing so the Court said:

Thus, at long last, there emerged an express constitutional definition of citizenship. But it was one restricted to the combination of three factors, each and all significant: birth in the United States, naturalization in the United States, and subjection to the jurisdiction of the United States. The definition obviously did not apply to any acquisition of citizenship by being born abroad of an American parent. That type, and any other not covered by the Fourteenth Amendment, was necessarily left to proper congressional action.

The Court has recognized the existence of this power. It has observed, "No alien has the slightest right to naturalization unless all statutory requirements are complied with . . . ." (snip) And the Court has specifically recognized the power of Congress not to grant a United States citizen the right to transmit citizenship by descent. 

In establishing a uniform rule of naturalization, Congress defines who requires naturalization and who does not. Granted, Congress can and has changed its collective mind over the years, but the Constitution implicitly gives Congress the right to do so.

[Nero Germanicus]

Al Gore got 90% of the black vote in 2000. Barack Obama got 93% in 2012.

[BuckeyeTexan]

And why did they do that?

They did so to tell the American electorate what their opinion was with respect to the lawsuits challenging McCain's eligibility and possibly as a signal to the courts who might have to entertain such lawsuits.

Your statement does not obviate the rest of what I stated.

You initial assertion is false, which in and of itself obviates the rest of what you said.

I learned that a person born outside the US to citizen parent(s) was only a natural born citizen, if his parents were diplomat status.

From the State Department's Foreign Affairs manual:

7 FAM 1131.2 Prerequisites for Transmitting U.S. Citizenship
(TL:CON-68; 04-01-1998)

Since 1790, there have been two prerequisites for transmitting U.S. citizenship to children born abroad:

(1) At least one natural parent must have been a U.S. citizen when the child was born. The only exception is for a posthumous child.

(2) The U.S. citizen parent(s) must have resided or been physically present in the United States for the time required by the law in effect when the child was born.

[BuckeyeTexan]

Maybe so, but congress does not have the power to "define" anything in the Constitution as that would be changing or amending and that can only be done by Constitutional amendment.

Defining natural-born citizen is inherent to the act of establishing a uniform rule of naturalization. Congress must determine who does not require naturalization in order to establish rules for those who do.

Similarly, Congress must determine what is legal in order to establish rules for that which is illegal.

[precisionshootist]

"Defining natural-born citizen is inherent to the act of establishing a uniform rule of naturalization. Congress must determine who does not require naturalization in order to establish rules for those who do. Similarly, Congress must determine what is legal in order to establish rules for that which is illegal."

Nope.

"Natural Born Citizen" was already defined when the Constitution was written as were other words such as "the People", "The States", "Infringe" and all other terms in the Constitution. None of these words were present in the Constitution as place holders waiting for Congress to decide what they meant.

The problem is many people don't accept the only logical definition of NBC.

Clearly a NBC is not a person born when an American man travels to Russia and gets a member of Vladimir Putin's family pregnant. OR, any other situation where only one parent is an American citizen and the baby is born on foreign soil.

[arthurus]

Because Cruz does not fit the original and continuing, at least until the last dozen years, the definition of “natural born.” He is, however, eligibble as that clause of the Constitution has been repealed by the Democrat Party and by Conservatives who believe that it doesn’t apply to them.I am not being bitteror satirical. That is just how it is. Cruz and Walker are the two stars of the Conservativism.

[Yosemitest]

I understand, but some people still want to know about him.

[Plummz]

Cruz Sr was either a legal immigrant to Canada or a full-blown Canadian citizen at the time. The Cruzes haven’t clarified exactly when Cruz Sr got his Candian citizenship.

[American Constitutionalist]

Was not Cuba a US territory at one time just like Guam ? Philippines ? Purto Rico ?

[Yosemitest]

"Cruz Sr was either a legal immigrant to Canada or a full-blown Canadian citizen at the time.
The Cruzes haven’t clarified exactly when Cruz Sr got his Candian citizenship. "

Source from JUNE 20, 2013 for answer tho your question

.. 74-Year-old Rafael Bienvenido Cruz:

"I came to this country legally," Cruz's father says.
"I came here with a legal visa, and ... every step of the way, I have been here legally."

In an interview near his home outside Dallas, the elder Cruz says that as a teenager, he fought alongside Fidel Castro's forces to overthrow Cuba's U.S.-backed dictator, Fulgencio Batista.
He was caught by Batista's forces, he says, and jailed and beaten before being released.
It was 1957, and Cruz decided to get out of Cuba by applying to the University of Texas.
Upon being admitted, he adds, he got a four-year student visa at the U.S. Consulate in Havana.

"Then the only other thing that I needed was an exit permit from the Batista government," Cruz recalls.
"A friend of the family, a lawyer friend of my father, basically bribed a Batista official to stamp my passport with an exit permit."

The Rafael Cruz that his son Ted portrays is a kind of Cuban Horatio Alger
— arriving in the U.S. with only $100, learning English on his own and washing dishes seven days a week for 50 cents an hour.

"Since he liked to eat seven days a week, he worked seven days a week, and he paid his way through the University of Texas," Ted Cruz says
of his father, "and then ended up getting a job and eventually going on to start a small business and to work towards the American dream."

Only he did that in Canada, where Ted was born.
His father went there after having earlier obtained political asylum in the U.S. when his student visa ran out.
He then got a green card, he says, and married Ted's mother, an American citizen.
The two of them moved to Canada to work in the oil industry.

"I worked in Canada for eight years," Rafael Cruz says. "And while I was in Canada, I became a Canadian citizen."

The elder Cruz says he renounced his Canadian citizenship when he finally became a U.S. citizen in 2005 —
48 years after leaving Cuba.
Why did he take so long to do it?
"I don't know. I guess laziness, or — I don't know," he says.

Peter Spiro, a legal expert on U.S. citizenship at Temple University, says Rafael Cruz followed "sort of a zigzag path to citizenship."
Spiro says Cruz's multicountry odyssey did not follow traditional models for immigration.

[Nero Germanicus]

When the Treaty of Paris of 1898 was signed which ended the Spanish-American War, the U.S. received Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines as territories. Under the peace treaty Spain also gave up control of Cuba and the U.S. administered the island from April, 1899 until Cuba became the independent Republic of Cuba on May 20, 1902.
Cuba was never an official U.S. Territory.

[Yosemitest]

Cuba Becomes United States Protectorate and NOT a US Territory.
Read the History of Cuba.
If you're thinking about the United States Naval Station at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. read this:

... In 1903, the new Cuban government signed an agreement with Roosevelt, who had since become president,
allowing the United States to lease 45 square miles of Cuban territory, on either side of the mouth of Guantánamo Bay,
for use as a "U.S. Coaling and Navy Station."
The rent was 2,000 gold coins per year, which today is worth $4,085.

The Cubans insist that when their constitution was written in 1901, its framers were forced to include the wording of the Platt Amendment,Otherwise, the United States would not withdraw its occupation troops.
According to the Cubans, the leasing of the land for the naval station was a direct result of that strong-arm tactic.

In 1934, the lease was renegotiated with the stipulation
that the outpost would revert to Cuban control ONLT BT MUTUAL AGREEMENT.
No such agreement has ever been reached; American servicemen and servicewomen have been stationed there ever since. ...

The is the MAIN REASON Obama wants to normalize relations with Cuba, to CLOSE Guantánamo (Gitmo) .

[Yosemitest]

Cuba Becomes United States Protectorate and NOT a US Territory.
Read the History of Cuba.
If you're thinking about the United States Naval Station at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. read this:

... In 1903, the new Cuban government signed an agreement with Roosevelt, who had since become president,
allowing the United States to lease 45 square miles of Cuban territory, on either side of the mouth of Guantánamo Bay,
for use as a "U.S. Coaling and Navy Station."
The rent was 2,000 gold coins per year, which today is worth $4,085.

The Cubans insist that when their constitution was written in 1901, its framers were forced to include the wording of the Platt Amendment,Otherwise, the United States would not withdraw its occupation troops.
According to the Cubans, the leasing of the land for the naval station was a direct result of that strong-arm tactic.

In 1934, the lease was renegotiated with the stipulation
that the outpost would revert to Cuban control ONLT BT MUTUAL AGREEMENT.
No such agreement has ever been reached; American servicemen and servicewomen have been stationed there ever since. ...

The is the MAIN REASON Obama wants to normalize relations with Cuba, to CLOSE Guantánamo (Gitmo) .

[Yosemitest]

Am I the only one that knows HOW TO RESEARCH THESE QUESTIONS ?
Read Comment #114.

[Plummz]

No answer there.

[Yosemitest]

Yes there is.
You just DON'T LIKE THE ANSWER.
Read the LINKED SOURCES.

[Plummz]

I’ve read that article before. It did not and still does not say what date or year Cruz Sr became a Canadian citizen. Calm down and stop screaming.

[Nero Germanicus]

Obviously you are not the only one who knows how to research these questions..
Cuba was an occupied U.S. protectorate not an annexed territory, for three years. Then it became a republic,

[Yosemitest]

Obviously all that matters was his intent to be a PERMANENT resident of the United States, proven by his "Green Card" which I addressed in comment #111.