Is he American?
His mother, Eleanor Darragh, was born in Delaware of Irish and Italian descent. She married Rafael Cruz, a Cuban, who immigrated to the US in 1957 and graduated from the U of T in 1961. Ted was born in Calgary in 1970, where his parents were working in the oil business. They moved back to Houston when Ted was four. Therefore, he is not Canadian-born, but, rather, born in Canada.
By virtue of his parentage, Ted Cruz is a natural born citizen, being entitled to US citizenship by birth via at least his mother (I don't know if his father was naturalized).
By virtue of his parentage, Ted Cruz is a natural born citizen, being entitled to US citizenship by birth via at least his mother (I don't know if his father was naturalized).
OK. The statute you would be looking for I think is somewhere in 1406 or 1409 or 1411 of the USCA--I don't have time or inclination to try to look it up at the moment.
You will also want to know on what date Eleanor was born because the applicable mother only statute turns on the number of years after age 14 his mother had her permanent residence in the US before he was born.
You may also want to know the day of the year Ted was born because the applicable statute was amended several times in the 1960's and 70's and when you look at the effective dates of the amendments which you will find in the footnotes to the USCA section, you will see that the amendment applies only to persons born after a specified date.
All of that to confirm your hope that he is eligible under the Constitution to hold the office of US Senator.
As to the Natural Born clause in Article II, Section 1, there are a number of poster's here who are not lawyers--Constitutional Lawyers all know that the test of Natural Born Citizenship is place of birth--to be Natural Born, you need to have been born within the geographical territory of the several states; nothing else is relevant--period.
You can wish the result were otherwise in the case of Cruz; you can wish you could prove the place of birth of the current occupant of the White House because he too was born outside the US. But there isn't any real lawyer in the Constitutional Law business that would want to be in court with the argument for Natural Born for a client who was not born in the US.