No question Ted Cruz is eligible to be president

The Bryan-College Station Eagle ^ | January 10, 2016 | The Editorial Board

[2ndDivisionVet]

No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty-five years, and been fourteen years a resident within the United States.

-- U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 1

It is easy to ignore the often-hateful blatherings of Donald Trump, but his questioning of Ted Cruz' eligibility to be president needs an answer. And that answer is a clear "yes."

Trump knows very well that Cruz is eligible, but in his desperation to stave off a surging Cruz candidacy The Donald will say anything.

Although he was born in Calgary, Canada in 1970, Ted Cruz is considered a "natural born" citizen of the United States because his mother was born in Delaware. His Cuban father was working in the Canadian oil fields when his son was born. Thus, the Texas senator was born a citizen of both the United States and Canada. He always has though of himself -- rightly -- as American, saying he didn't realize he had dual citizenship until it was pointed out by The Dallas Morning News in 2014. At that time, Cruz renounced his Canadian citizenship, although he could have kept it without endangering his eligibility to be America's president.

Despite claims by some Trump supporters -- who still are trying to prove that Barack Obama's birth in Hawaii of a Kenyan father and American mother makes him ineligible to be president -- Cruz does not hold a Canadian passport and, apparently, never has.

Two former Justice Department lawyers, in a Harvard Law Review article quoted in USA Today last March, said, "Despite the happenstance of a birth across the border, there is no question that Sen, Cruz has been a citizen from birth and is thus a 'natural born citizen' within the meaning of the Constitution,"

Neal Katyal, who was acting solicitor general in the Obama administration from May 2010 to June 2011, and Paul Clement, solicitor general from 2004 to 2008 in the George W. Bush administration, said, "As Congress has recognized since the Founding, a person born abroad to a U.S. citizen parent is generally a U.S. citizen from birth with no need for naturalization. And the phrase 'natural born citizen' in the Constitution encompasses all such citizens from birth.

"Thus, an individual born to a U.S. citizen parent -- whether in California or Canada or the Canal Zone -- is a U.S. citizen from birth and is fully eligible to serve as president if the people so choose."

Surely Trump knows he is wrong about Cruz' eligibility, so why bring it up. Quite simply, Trump knows his poll numbers are ephemeral, that he has garnered just about all the supporters he is going to get. As Republican voters get serious about the election, they will settle for more serious, far more qualified canidates, including, possibly, Ted Cruz. TheTeflon Don's non-stick surface is beginning to peel.

There are many reasons to vote for Ted Cruz for president, and probably just as many not to. Like all candidates, he asks us to accept him, warts and all.

Whatever you think about Ted Cruz, he is eligible to be president of the United States -- and has been for a decade since he turned 35.

[RginTN]

Since I never said that. Ok move on

[EternalVigilance]

Well, I'd sure hate to have misinterpreted your post.

Tell me then what you meant by this:

Laws you like are settled laws you don't like need to be taken before the SC to be settled law.

Because it is a rather tortured sentence.

[South Dakota]

In your opinion
MANY of us disagree.
You cannot be born on foreign soil to a father of another nationalits and be a NBC

[EternalVigilance]

Show them the law which settles this issue and they will ignore it, make up lies or create their own meaning.

By the way, mere laws, or statutes, can't settle these questions.

Because mere statutes cannot amend the Constitution or its requirements.

[RginTN]

That was my opinion of your posts to me not what I think.

See the word you not I

[EternalVigilance]

You cannot be born on foreign soil to a father of another nationalits and be a NBC

The main reason you can't is because such births, and subsequent citizenship questions that concern them, are governed entirely by our immigration and naturalization laws.

You can't be a citizen by virtue of our naturalization laws and at the same time be "natural born." The two things are mutually exclusive.

One thing I've learned as I've dug in to research these questions in the last few days is that people in Cruz's position throughout our nation's history would NOT have been considered citizens, much less natural born citizens. Definitely they would not have been considered citizens before 1934.

[EternalVigilance]

Okay. Then you were just plain wrong anyhow.

[RginTN]

Well its easy to misinterpet a post. No ones perfect but God.

[EternalVigilance]

It’s especially easy to misinterpret a sentence when it is incomprehensible. :-)

[RginTN]

Reading comprehension makes a sentence understandable. The use of the word You means the poster is not saying I.

[Yosemitest]

TED CRUZ's father, 74-year-old Rafael Bienvenido Cruz.
"I came to this country legally," Cruz's father says.
"I came here with a legal visa, and ... every step of the way, I have been here legally."

In an interview near his home outside Dallas, the elder Cruz says that as a teenager, he fought alongside Fidel Castro's forces to overthrow Cuba's U.S.-backed dictator, Fulgencio Batista.
He was caught by Batista's forces, he says, and jailed and beaten before being released.
It was 1957, and Cruz decided to get out of Cuba by applying to the University of Texas.
Upon being admitted, he adds, he got a four-year student visa at the U.S. Consulate in Havana.

"Then the only other thing that I needed was an exit permit from the Batista government," Cruz recalls.
"A friend of the family, a lawyer friend of my father, basically bribed a Batista official to stamp my passport with an exit permit."

The Rafael Cruz that his son Ted portrays is a kind of Cuban Horatio Alger - - arriving in the U.S. with only $100, learning English on his own and washing dishes seven days a week for 50 cents an hour.

"Since he liked to eat seven days a week, he worked seven days a week, and he paid his way through the University of Texas," Ted Cruz says of his father,
"and then ended up getting a job and eventually going on to start a small business and to work towards the American dream."

Only he did that in Canada, where Ted was born.
His father went there AFTER having earlier obtained political asylum in the U.S. WHEN his student visa ran out.
He then got a green card, he says, and married Ted's mother, an American citizen.
The two of them moved to Canada to work in the oil industry.

"I worked in Canada for eight years," Rafael Cruz says.
"And while I was in Canada, I became a Canadian citizen."

The elder Cruz says he renounced his Canadian citizenship when he finally became a U.S. citizen ...

I can only guess as to the reason it took so long, but probably to keep Cuba from being able to recall him.
As to WHY Rafael Bienvenido Cruz fought alongside Fidel Castro's forces to overthrow Cuba's U.S.-backed dictator, Fulgencio Batista, I can only guess.
I guess he didn't have a choice, being a young teenager fresh out of hight school.

[EternalVigilance]

It was still a horror of a sentence. And inaccurate to boot, going by your later explanations.

Nothing is wrong with my reading comprehension skills.

[RginTN]

all your opinions of course.

when a sentence uses the word You thats quite a difference from saying I.
keep denying you jumped to conclusions. Notice I used the word YOU

[EternalVigilance]

The misunderstanding had nothing to do with your use of the word “you.” It had to do with the incoherence of the rest of the sentence.

[EternalVigilance]

Perhaps we could find a kind English teacher to parse your sentence to try to make some sense of it.

"Laws you like are settled laws you don't like need to be taken before the SC to be settled law."

[RginTN]

You said, “I don’t have anything to discuss with someone who thinks that only the SCOTUS gets to decide what is “settled law.”

I never said I thought that.

So you do have reading comprehension issues

[EternalVigilance]

Doubt that would help much, though.

[EternalVigilance]

No. Your sentence made no sense. So it was quite natural for me to misread it as you thinking that the Supreme Court decides what is “settled law.”

We’ve already covered this. Why do you keep bringing it up?

[EternalVigilance]

For the record, the only “settled law” is the Law of God, and the laws of nature that He created. Any human law not premised on the laws of nature and nature’s God is arbitrary, and therefore always subject to change at the whims of wicked, unstable men.

And in America, the supreme law of the land is the Constitution. Mere statutes are inferior to this supreme law, and to the laws of nature and nature’s God upon which the foundations of that Constitution were laid.

[jdsteel]

“In your opinion
MANY of us disagree.
You cannot be born on foreign soil to a father of another nationalits and be a NBC”

Sure, you are free to disagree. But, for all of the reasons and court cases outlined in the Harvard Law Review article referenced in the original post, your opinion doesn’t matter when it comes to his legal status.