Yes, Ted Cruz Can be President

As we head into a potential government shutdown over the funding of Obamacare, the iconoclastic junior senator from Texas — love him or hate him — continues to stride across the national stage. With his presidential aspirations as big as everything in his home state, by now many know what has never been a secret: Ted Cruz was born in Canada.

(Full disclosure: I’m Canadian myself, with a green card. Also, Cruz has been a friend since his days representing Texas before the Supreme Court.)

But does that mean that Cruz’s presidential ambitions are gummed up with maple syrup or stuck in snowdrifts altogether different from those plaguing the Iowa caucuses? Are the birthers now hoist on their own petards, having been unable to find any proof that President Obama was born outside the United States but forcing their comrade-in-boots to disqualify himself by releasing his Alberta birth certificate?

No, actually, and it’s not even that complicated; you just have to look up the right law. It boils down to whether Cruz is a “natural born citizen” of the United States, the only class of people constitutionally eligible for the presidency. (The Founding Fathers didn’t want their newly independent nation to be taken over by foreigners on the sly.)

What’s a “natural born citizen”? The Constitution doesn’t say, but the Framers’ understanding, combined with statutes enacted by the First Congress, indicate that the phrase means both birth abroad to American parents — in a manner regulated by federal law — and birth within the nation’s territory regardless of parental citizenship. The Supreme Court has confirmed that definition on multiple occasions in various contexts.

There’s no ideological debate here: Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe and former solicitor general Ted Olson — who were on opposite sides in Bush v. Gore among other cases — co-authored a memorandum in March 2008 detailing the above legal explanation in the context of John McCain’s eligibility. Recall that McCain — lately one of Cruz’s chief antagonists — was born to U.S. citizen parents serving on a military base in the Panama Canal Zone.

In other words, anyone who is a citizen at birth — as opposed to someone who becomes a citizen later (“naturalizes”) or who isn’t a citizen at all — can be president.

So the one remaining question is whether Ted Cruz was a citizen at birth. That’s an easy one. The Nationality Act of 1940 outlines which children become “nationals and citizens of the United States at birth.” In addition to those who are born in the United States or born outside the country to parents who were both citizens — or, interestingly, found in the United States without parents and no proof of birth elsewhere — citizenship goes to babies born to one American parent who has spent a certain number of years here.

That single-parent requirement has been amended several times, but under the law in effect between 1952 and 1986 — Cruz was born in 1970 — someone must have a citizen parent who resided in the United States for at least 10 years, including five after the age of 14, in order to be considered a natural-born citizen. Cruz’s mother, Eleanor Darragh, was born in Delaware, lived most of her life in the United States, and gave birth to little Rafael Edward Cruz in her 30s. Q.E.D.

So why all the brouhaha about where Obama was born, given that there’s no dispute that his mother, Ann Dunham, was a citizen? Because his mother was 18 when she gave birth to the future president in 1961 and so couldn’t have met the 5-year-post-age-14 residency requirement. Had Obama been born a year later, it wouldn’t have mattered whether that birth took place in Hawaii, Kenya, Indonesia, or anywhere else. (For those born since 1986, by the way, the single citizen parent must have only resided here for five years, at least two of which must be after the age of 14.)

In short, it may be politically advantageous for Ted Cruz to renounce his Canadian citizenship before making a run at the White House, but his eligibility for that office shouldn’t be in doubt. As Tribe and Olson said about McCain — and could’ve said about Obama, or the Mexico-born George Romney, or the Arizona-territory-born Barry Goldwater — Cruz “is certainly not the hypothetical ‘foreigner’ who John Jay and George Washington were concerned might usurp the role of Commander in Chief.”

“The Constitution does not in words say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners. Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first. For the purposes of this case, it is not necessary to solve these doubts. It is sufficient for everything we have now to consider that all children born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction are themselves citizens. “ (Emphasis added.)

Read that passage very carefully, and you will see that the US Supreme Court clearly defined “natural-born citizen” by two independent remarks:

What is the 19th Amendment?

The 19th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guaranteed women the right to vote. Had nothing to do with “Natural Born Citizen.” Minor v Happersett still holds, “diminutive pal” Law is Law;)

Let’s look at the law:

Three types of citizenship are recognized by our government: native born (jus solis); naturalized; and citizen-by-statute (derived citizenship [jus sanguinas] from parents). All have equal rights. All can serve in Congress, either as a Representative in the House, or as a Senator in the Senate.

The following link will take you to the government’s own Immigration Service web page describing the three types of citizenship. (Note: the above was current in early 2009 before BHO2’s minions began mucking it up.)

http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.eb1d4c2a3e5b9ac89243c6a7543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=a2ec6811264a3210VgnVCM100000b92ca60aRCRD&vgnextchannel=a2ec6811264a3210VgnVCM100000b92ca60aRCRD

Natural born Citizen is NOT a type of statutory citizenship. Natural born is ONLY an eligibility requirement for the U.S. Presidency per Article II, Section 1, clause 5, of the U.S. Constitution, and requires, as per the Founders, the President and Vice President to be born in the United States (jus solis) AND of two citizen parents (jus sanguinas).

The definition of natural born Citizen appears in the holding of SCOTUS’s unanimous decision of Minor v. Happersett (1874).

Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1875), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the Constitution did not grant women the right to vote...

The Minor v. Happersett ruling was based on an interpretation of the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court readily accepted that Minor was a citizen of the United States, but it held that the constitutionally protected privileges of citizenship did not include the right to vote.

SCOTUS rejected Minor’s argument that she was a citizen under the 14th Amendment of the U.S.Constitution, and examined her eligibility, concluding that she belonged to the class of citizens who, being born in the U.S. of citizen parents, was a natural born Citizen, and not covered by the 14th Amendment. (Read that again — this means that 14th Amendment Citizens ARE NOT Natural born Citizens.) This holding has been used in 25 consequent SCOTUS decisions since 1875.

No one has the RIGHT to be President.

The eligibility requirement of Natural Born Citizenship (jus solis + jus sanguinas: born in the U.S. of U.S. citizen parents) must be viewed as a means to prevent split allegiance for any President of the United States.

The following is often used to support people like Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz who seek to be President, but it was superceded centuries ago and is a false argument.

“The First U.S. Congress included in the 1790 Immigration & Naturalization Act language to alert the State Department to the fact that Americans born abroad are “natural born” citizens” and are not to be viewed as foreigners due to foreign birth. They were not granted citizenship via that US statute rather citizenship was stated as a fact that must be recognized by immigration authorities. These children were not citizens by any other means than natural law, according to Congress, and statutory law was written to insure that their natural citizenship was recognized.”

This was superceded in 1795 with any “Natural born Citizen” statement absent.

The above 1790 Act is not a reasonable explanation. It fails to recognize that Congress only has powers over naturalization and has no power to define “natural born Citizen”, which has nothing to do with naturalization. Furthermore, if Congress wants to tell the State Department something, they don’t have to enact legislation to do it.

But more important is that all of the following naturalization acts, 1795, 1802, etc., were also passed to naturalize the children of U.S. citizens born abroad. And the words “natural born” were repealed in the 1795 Naturalization Act and never returned again.

If the public wants to change the Constitution and negate the presidential eligibility requirement of Natural born Citizen, then the United States Constitution provides for that in Article V.

The U.S. Congress does not have the power to define ‘Natural born Citizen’ except through the amendment process as defined in Article V.

There IS no point to it, penelopesire, other than the lamest of lame attempts to smear Ted Cruz over NOTHING.

It’s a feeble SMEAR attempt.

Just so you know, Ted’s father NEVER liked Commies. He fought the dictator Bautista when he was a mere teenager. Castro was fighting Bautista too but only when victorious later on declared his Communist dictatorship.

Meanwhile what did Ted’s father Rafael DO with his life? After being imprisoned and beaten by the Bautista regime, he got away to America to find and live in FREEDOM. He was eighteen years old and had $100 on him.

He worked seven days a week washing dishes earning 50 cents an hour. Put himself through to a college degree, started a small business and eventually became a church pastor.

He is a tremendous inspirational speaker, and a hero and role model to his son, Ted Cruz.

He hates and fights tyranny of every stripe and his favorite saying to Ted has always been, “We escaped to FREEDOM in America...if we lose FREEDOM here, where do we go???”

LucyT got this SMEAR from brown deer.

Yes, but is he the best Canadian for the job? Why not Putin? He's got more experience running a super power.

Cruz is being test run, the same as Rubio was being tested for a run, to give obama and those who put obama into place cover and to further redefine our definitions per the constitution, such as citizenship (amnesty and obama cover) and with marriage.

I doubt any care about the Constitution now beyond redefining it and using it to get what they want.

So, what's the point. Just run someone the faithful can listen to, vote for and contribute to. The Constitution is dead. The United States is also dead. We're just waiting for the right crisis that can't go to waste to reveal what we've become.

A kinder, gentler oligarchy or whatever you call what we have now is as close as we're going to get to the Constitution, short of revolution or Levin's amendment idea.

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