As a result of my work assignment, my daughter has a Canadian birth certificate, not an American birth certificate. What she DOES HAVE is a Consular Report of Birth Abroad. I suspect Ted Cruz has the same.
As a natural born citizen, my daughter was NOT naturalized. She did not have to take a test, meet a residency requirement, swear allegiance, or go through a ceremony. She was a citizen from the very instant I cut her umbilical cord.
To reiterate... She was born with her US citizenship. She was an American citizen from the moment she drew her first breath.
What came later, via the Consular Report of Birth Abroad, is the documentation she would need later in life to prove her citizenship. You can read all about it on the US Department of State website. The website explains it all.
Some may try to establish their own definition of Natural Born vs. Naturalized, but here is the take-home quote from the State Department website that anyone should be able to understand:
"A Consular Report of Birth Abroad of a U.S. citizen is only issued to a child who acquired U.S. citizenship at birth"
You can Google the URL yourself if you don't want to take my word for it.
Therefore, Natural Born means US Citizenship at birth, as opposed to Naturalized which means citizenship came at some point after the birth.
It is a very simple concept unless someone's intention is to contort the situation for some purpose. Anyone who claims otherwise has an agenda, and that agenda is not an honest one.
Yes she was. No disagreement with you that she didn't go through the "first papers, residency, second papers, oath" regimen, but that is not the only form of naturalization. He US citizenship depends solely on an Act of Congress.
SCOTUS case law has precedence over State Department and "legal scholar" attempts to summarize the case law.