No there is none. Rafael Cruz was a legal permanent resident (green card holder) of the United States.
This horse is truly dead, and he ain't getting back up.
No he was not! He became a Canadian citizen and was one when baby Ted was born.
A green card is a permit to reside and work in the United States, without becoming a “citizen” of the United States.
A green card is a permit to reside and work in the United States, without becoming a “citizen” of the United States.
Cruz senior became a Canadian Citizen before Rafael Edward “Ted” Cruz was born. Because of that, Ted Cruz’s status as a natural born citizen fails the strict definition intended by the Founders. The only explicit definition of “natural born citizen” in the historical record was provided by one of the Founders: David Ramsay. Historian Ramsey defines it as meaning a person born in the country to citizen parents. No testimony from any other Founder or delegate of the Constitutional Convention exists that claims any other definition.
In 1790, the first Congress deemed all persons born of two United States citizen parents abroad to be “natural born citizens,” but the words “natural born” were repealed in 1795. Congress never again legislated the definition of “natural born citizen,” and no United States statute currently defines the term or even mentions it. The intended meaning stays with the Constitutional Convention of 1776 that is used in Ramsay’s 1789 essay, “A Dissertation on the Manners of Acquiring the Character and Privileges of a Citizen,” as its authoritative guide to what is a natural born citizen.