Sorry it is Both!
More importantly as you suggest it is the parentage that is most important. NBC is like a human pedigree,
A puppy born to a poodle mom and poodle dad is a poodle!
A puppy born to a poodle mom and a beagle dad is a mongrel.
Ted Cruz is like the latter. He has elements of both parent’s citizenship. He is not 100% American. He is Cuban-American, or, if you like, American-Cuban.
The Founders intended the NBC clause of Article II to be exclusionary. It was intended to weed out those who were not 100% American....
.....Born in a country to parents who are it’s citizens.....
If Cruz were a Canine we’d all call him a mutt......
Just as the poodle-beagle is ineligible for competing in an AKC Show
so is
Cruz ineligible for running for the Office of the President of the US.
Cruz was born a dual citizen. Canadian by place of birth and U.S. by reason of his mother’s citizenship. He was not also born a Cuban citizen, as Cuba - like most authoritarian countries - does not condone dual citizenship. But, I like your colorful language. Mongrel.
Ivanka Trump, a beautiful young woman, born to an American father of German and Scottish descent (hence already a mongrel), was further mongrelized by having a mother who was from the Czech Republic. The same could be said of Baron Trump, a boy who looks so much like his father. But, mongrelized by reason of his already mongrel father and his Slovenian mother.
Human beings, unlike dogs, have citizenship. While humans have ancestries, and these are meaningful, our loyalties can be based on decisions. Dogs were domesticated and bred by humans, over many generations, from their wolf ancestors. Mongrel dogs, we would suspect, become more like their ancestor wolves, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Men and wolf hunter teams survived in the challenging conditions of the Ice Age in the northern regions of the Eurasian landmass.
We humans, on the other hand, are descendants of Adam and Eve, who were themselves fully human. The evidence we have of the most primitive humans indicates that they fashioned tools, counted, expressed themselves in art, adorned themselves in jewelry, braided their hair, and engaged in religious worship. In spreading themselves across the world, those who had skin pigmentation and other traits conducive to survival locally were the ones who survived to reproductive age and, so, procreated the next generation. But, all these traits were in the original genetic mix of our common ancestors.