>> the insights gained from the naturalization laws of 1790 and 1795 show that Washington wouldn’t have considered Ted Cruz to be a natural born citizen <<
Sorta correct, because one or both of those laws said that for somebody born abroad to be considered as natural-born, the FATHER had to be a US citizen. The mother was not mentioned.
So just try persuading the 53% of current USA voters who are female that their citizenship doesn’t really have the same full status as that of males. Lotsa luck with that!
Here’s a question. How about someone born overseas, to a mother that is Canadian but her husband is American?
Could the issue be forced, to do a DNA test, to prove that the husband actually is the father?
What if the biological father of the presidential candidate turned out not to be an American?
The other part of both laws said that the father also had to show himself resident in the US. Cruz’s father had already shown himself desiring to be a Canadian by the point of Cruz’s birth.
So, by that provision as well as that of the ‘father’ being the citizen, Cruz would have failed in Washington’s time.
I don’t dispute that today’s law says Cruz is a citizen at birth and that legal thinking seems to equate the two. There has never been a court case focused on that particular issue.