Obama would not be a natural born citizen if he was born in Kenya because his American mother was not 21 yet the law at time would not have given him citizenship at birth if were born outside the country.
Cruz’s American mother was over 21 so he would been a citizen at birth even if he were born on Mars. That’s what natural born citizen means, citizen at birth as opposed to a naturalized citizen. Jindal and Rubio are also eligible cause they were born here to legal resident parents and were citizens at birth, period.
Some may disagree but it’s clear how the courts would rule if some idiot filed a lawsuit.
I swear it seems to me that the people who couldn’t swallow the unlikely idea of Obama’s pregnant mommy hopping a transatlantic flight so she could give birth in a village in third world hellhole just made this other stuff up on the spot. I wish to hell they’d stop using it poo poo the idea of Cruz, that only helps Obama’s side and makes us look silly rather than “principled” which is what they are going for. Honesty, to keep talking about this is ridiculous.
A few of these “birthers” are my FRiends but I have to strongly disagree here.
Nothing stands in Cruz’s way except the voters and I’d like him to be the next President or VP to Scott Walker, the only other potential candidate that fires my imagination.
It isn’t that the federal law that provides birthright citizenship has a minimum age (whether 21 or otherwise) for a U.S. citizen to transmit birthright citizenship to his or her child born abroad whose other parent is an alien; it’s that the law only allows a U.S.-citizen parent to pass on U.S. citizenship to the foreign-born child if such U.S.-citizen parent has, in the past, lived a certain number of years in the U.S., of which a certain number of those years must be after turning 14 years of age. Nowadays, the U.S.-citizen parent must have lived at least 5 years in the U.S., and at least 1 year in the U.S. after the age of 14, for the foreign-born child with a single U.S. citizen parent to be a U.S. citizen at birth. But the law in the books before 1986 or so, and during the births of both Obama and Cruz, required that a foreign-born child with only one U.S.-citizen parent was a U.S. citizen at birth only if the U.S. citizen parent had in the past lived in the U.S. for a total of at least 10 years, of which at least 5 years took place after turning 14.
Ted Cruz’s New Jerseyan mother had lived in the U.S. for over 20 years, and more than 10 years after turning 14, before she and her husband moved to Calgary to work forcan oil company, so there is no doubt that Ted Cruz was a U.S. citizen at birth (and thus a natural born citizen) despite being born in Canada.
Barack Obama’s mother, on the other hand, did not meet the requirement as of 1961, since she was only 18 years old when Obama was born, and thus it was mathematically impossible for her to have lived in the U.S. for as much as 5 years after turning 14. So if Obama was born abroad, he would not be a U.S. citizen at birth, because he only had one U.S. citizen parent and at that time such parent didn’t meet the requirements to transmit her U.S. citizenship to a child born abroad. That’s why it was so important for Obama to insist that he was born in Hawaii, since otherwise he would not be a natural born citizen (or even a U.S. citizen, absent a later naturalization).
So the requirement isn’t that the U.S.-citizen parent must be at least 21 for his or her foreign-born child with just one U.S.-citizen parent to be a U.S. citizen at birth—it is that such U.S. citizen parent have lived at least a certain number of years in the U.S., including a certain number of years after turning 14. And even back when Obama and Cruz was born, it was possible for a U.S. citizen who was under 21 (but, due to the post-14 requirement, not for one under 19) to transmit birthright citizenship to a foreign-born child; and a U.S. citizen older than 21 would not transmit U.S. citizenship to a foreign-born child with only one U.S.-citizen parent if she didn’t meet the past-U.S. residency requirements.