There are many of us that have been “screaming” for years that Obummer isn’t eligible because his father was never a citizen. You cannot have other allegiances if you want to be President.
We are not hypocrites, if Obummer is not eligible because of his dad, then Cruz is in the same boat.
There is a picture that has been posted around the web in several places that shows that BOTH of Cruz’s parents were registered voters in Canada in 1973. You could not be a dual citizen of Canada and another country until 1974. His mom would not have been a citizen then and couldn’t “transfer her citizenship” if she wasn’t a citizen of the US anymore. Even if she transferred her citizenship, it still would only make him a citizen.
The founders wanted someone with no other allegiances, they did not want King George III to have a child and have that child grow up to be President. You have to understand that Natural Born Citizen is a completely different class of citizenship than “citizen” and “naturalized citizen”.
Please don’t start insulting those of us that are questioning Cruz’s eligibility, 2 Harvard professors were debating it recently and they had 2 completely different opinions. It is NOT settled. If you notice, Cruz tells people that he is eligible because he never had to be naturalized, that doesn’t make you a natural born citizen, it just makes you a citizen. There IS a big difference.
We are not hypocrites, if Obummer is not eligible because of his dad, then Cruz is in the same boat.
Obamas eligibility was questioned for more reasons than “because of his dad”.
It is settled, not in the sense of a definitive SCOTUS decision that spells out all the parameters of the NBC question, but in terms of the current thinking on the issue. A number of recent cases have reinforced an idea often rejected here at FR, that the naturalization process cannot be applied to one who is born a citizen, that naturalization is strictly an after-birth event, and that the enumerated naturalization power of the Congress includes the ability to address those who do not need to be naturalized, which in turn means citizens at birth as recognized by the INA statutes are in fact natural born citizens. In Zivotofsky (2015), Justice Thomas has made this statement explicitly. See here:
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/576/13-628/concur5.html
So there’s a sense in which both sides of this are right. NBC is not defined in the Constitution, and there is not one case that ever determined presidential eligibility for a foreign born American citizen at birth. But the current thinking of SCOTUS showing up in the last two decades or so leaves almost no doubt that the Court would find Cruz eligible by unanimous decision.
Peace,
SR
Listen, I won’t insult you if you don’t insult me. I have been studying this issue for over a decade and it is a complex issue with many highly erroneous points of view and bad analysis being thrown about by both sides.
One thing is certain: there is no simple answer, no ten or fifteen word formula that provides a ready answer. I believe that I have a handle on the issue, but it took me a long time to understand it and I know that there are many very smart people who would disagree with me. That’s my point.
As for some of the other things you say, you simply have a lot of your facts wrong. Ted Cruz’s mother was a US citizen and Ted Cruz became a US citizen at birth by virtue of that fact. She wasn’t a Canadian citizen at that time, and as far as I know, she was never a Canadian citizen at any other time either. That would be a fact in the public record, and if true the oppo research teams would have the evidence on the front pages of every newspaper in America by now. You are beating a dead horse there.
So, just in summary, the Constitution mentions only two kinds of citizenship and this is carried through our statutes as well: Natural Born, i.e. citizen at birth conferred by the facts of the birth, and Naturalized, which is citizenship acquired AFTER birth. Only these two.
I must say that I have probably posted enough verbiage on this matter over the years to compile into a book, and I have been on both sides of this over time. The history of citizenship is twisted and complex because the founders didn’t leave much of a record and later courts have been all over the place on the subject, giving us, among other things, anchor babies, something the founders would be aghast at.
So, just lets leave it there. You have your point of view and I have mine. Neither of us is likely to change anyone’s mind.