I can’t see how a provision that was meant to reasonably keep out foreign influences due to a person’s birth, and was left intentionally vague so the public in close cases could make a judgment call on it for themselves, would out-of-hand disallow from being President someone accidentally being born in Canada because of their parents’ weekend trip.
That’s really looking at a law to the exclusion of its purpose, and as though it’s trying to exclude everyone it possibly can.
But it might exclude everyone it possibly could, and still a candidate could have been subject to a strong foreign influence in many other ways, while still being “natural born.”
From everything known about this provision, it wasn’t meant or expected to be the silver bullet for eliminating foreign influences.
It was meant to clearly disqualify people in obvious cases, mostly that they weren’t born here but were immigrants that naturalized. Arnold Schwarzenegger is an obvious recent example of someone who there was talk of amending the Constitution for so he could run.
But the fact that Cruz was an American citizen at birth, and that so much hair-splitting has to go into claiming that he was instantaneously naturalized at birth, and that there is so much debate about this and support for him being natural-born, tells me that he’s eligible.
He meets the minimum legal qualifications at least, murky as those are, and is eligible, and so voters and the public at large will have to decide if they think his circumstances impair his ability to be President.
So keep in mind:
1. His eligibility question has nothing to do with the black-and-white definition of “natural born,” which eliminates people like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
2. His eligibility falls into the gray area about “natural-born citizen” intentionally left in the Constitution itself.
3. It’s quite a matter for academic debate, and scholars come down on both sides. I also see, for instance, that PolitiFact argues that he’s eligible. In this case, a good clear argument for him being ineligible just doesn’t exist. Hence, he’s eligible.
Whether or not you believe me, I'm not looking at this in an effort to knock out Cruz, and as my posts show, I don't see any risk to his candidacy based on the constitution. The constitution says whatever people want it to say, that day. "Situational con law," a form of situational ethics. It's in vogue.
I'm interested both from a con law point of view, and a human/mob behavior point of view, as well as watching and marveling at how effectively the elites and message-makers are able to put false belief in people's heads. Not disparage the people, we're all human and susceptible to persuasion, even to a false conclusion.
-- It's quite a matter for academic debate --
It is indeed. I find the academic question to be easy to resolve. The fact that it is presented as "difficult" or "unsettled" is a tool to manipulate public belief.
500 years ago, most everybody believed that the sun orbits the earth. Today, lots of people believe there is such a thing as "global warming" and that it caused by human activity. I mean they really and truly believe. And as far as it has an effect on politics, belief is all that matters. The truth is (or at least can be) irrelevant.
Sure it does.
You can either be a natural born citizen, by virtue of nature, or you can be a citizen naturalized by virtue of statute law. You can't be both, because the two things are mutually exclusive.
And it is quite clear that Senator Cruz is a citizen solely by virtue of the generous provisions of the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1952, the controlling statute in force when he was born in 1970.
Clear enough?