“Unless someone can produce naturalization paperwork that made him a citizen later in his life, he’s natural born”
Cruz is a natural born citizen of Canada.
To obtain his US citizenship he had to file paperwork, pay a fee and go through a process.
He only became a US citizen after this process was completed. It’s unclear when he did this but it was likely many years after he was born, when his family decided to move to the US.
There is paperwork for all of this and we’ll see it sooner or later.
By the contemporary laws of both lands, arguably counted “natural born” of both. The fee and paperwork wasn’t to “OBTAIN” the US citizenship, it was to get official affirmation of it. There wouldn’t have been any of the requirements demanded of foreigners.
What paperwork beyond a record of his birth? What process? Did it require someone to approve, or just a record of birth?
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.
A Consular Report of Birth Abroad does not connote a naturalization process, FRiend. It is a paperwork step to report the fact of birth for an American citizen outside the boundaries of the United States.