If we had followed the Founders instructions to only elect a natural born citizen as president we wouldn’t have the tragedy that this president is.
Whether or not Obama is a natural born citizen would be based on whether he was born in the US. He claims he was born in Hawaii which was part of the US when he was born. However, being born in the US is not always necessary to be a natural born citizen. It was in his case because his mother did not meet the residency requirements of the naturalization act of 1952.
The raging debate on this forum for some ridiculous reason is whether Cruz is natural born. I avoided jumping into the fray when it first happened because I thought the silliness and pettiness would die down.
Even if Obama is technically a natural born citizen, which we can only guess because his identity has been so well hidden from scrutiny, he is clearly foreign in his thinking and loyalties.
On the other hand, Cruz is technically, legally AND practically a natural born citizen. His loyalties are to this nation.
Under the same act in 1952, Cruz was a citizen of the US from birth because his mother’s US citizenship was conferred to him at birth. He did not have to naturalize.
Some here are stuck on the convoluted theory that natural born somehow means without legislation, and naturalized means citizen by legislation. I have shown evidence to the contrary.
The founders understood children were naturally citizens based on their parents’ citizenship, or in some cases, based on their parents’ residency if not in the nation of which they were a citizen. This is because children cannot consent to be governed, so the parents must give consent for them until they are of age. Natural born means the transferring of the parents’ natural state to the child at birth.
Because citizenship is a legal construct (people are born humans automatically but not citizens apart from legal system to make it so) even being a natural born citizen must be identified by law. Laws cannot change the definition of natural born or naturalization, but they can define the rule of naturalization. This includes who is a citizen at birth, who must go through a process to become a citizen, and what that process is. (The process could be an application or simply a statute or amendment declaring a class of people to be citizens like the 14th amendment did.)
Ultimately, a natural born citizen is whoever is a citizen at birth according to the laws of naturalization which were in effect at the time of such birth. A naturalized citizen is someone who becomes a citizen later. Cruz was born an American citizen. He is natural born. He meets the qualifications for president.