Senator Cruz and your Bahama baby would probably still be a natural born citizen according to the original intent of the Framers, so long as both parents were US citizens, the child did not retain any dual citizenship loyalties, and the parents had at some point resided in the United States. Here is how the First Congress defined "natural born citizen" in the Naturalization Act of 1790:
And the children of such persons so naturalized, dwelling within the United States, being under the age of twenty-one years at the time of such naturalization, shall also be considered as citizens of the United States. And the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens: Provided, That the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States: Provided also, That person heretofore proscribed by any State, shall be admitted as a citizen as aforesaid, except by an act of Legislature of the State in which such person was proscribed
Many "birthers" say that you have to be both born in the US and be born to two US citizen parents in order to be natural born citizen. That your parents should be US citizens is clear, but it is not clear that you must be born in the territory of the US to be a natural born citizen. This uncertainty arises from short-sighted Congresses making changes to the US Constitution without clearly specifying how those changes may affect to other parts of the Constitution in unintended ways.
Before the adoption of the 14th amendment in 1868, there were only two ways to become a US Citizen. The first was through the bloodline of your parents (i.e. natural born citizens)as mentioned above. The only other way to receive citizenship before 1868 was through Naturalization. When the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, it introduced a new third method for a person to become a US citizen which had not been mentioned in the Constitution. This new type of citizenship is called "ius soli" or the "law of the soil." This principle states that a person becomes a citizen by being born in a geographical area rather than by inheriting citizenship from their parents' bloodlines. It's relationship to natural born citizenship has been argued ever since.
“Before the adoption of the 14th amendment in 1868, there were only two ways to become a US Citizen. The first was through the bloodline of your parents (i.e. natural born citizens)as mentioned above. The only other way to receive citizenship before 1868 was through Naturalization. When the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, it introduced a new third method for a person to become a US citizen which had not been mentioned in the Constitution. This new type of citizenship is called “ius soli” or the “law of the soil.” “
You are completely wrong. There was no “two citizen parent’ requirement, not at the time of the Constitution, and never since. And in fact, the Supreme Court has said that NBC and the 14th are restatements of the same principle, in effect during colonial times, and never changed.
“It thus clearly appears that, by the law of England for the last three centuries, beginning before the settlement of this country and continuing to the present day, aliens, while residing in the dominions possessed by the Crown of England, were within the allegiance, the obedience, the faith or loyalty, the protection, the power, the jurisdiction of the English Sovereign, and therefore every child born in England of alien parents was a natural-born subject unless the child of an ambassador or other diplomatic agent of a foreign State or of an alien enemy in hostile occupation of the place where the child was born.
III. The same rule was in force in all the English Colonies upon this continent down to the time of the Declaration of Independence, and in the United States afterwards, and continued to prevail under the Constitution as originally established.”
And:
“The real object of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, in qualifying the words, “All persons born in the United States” by the addition “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” would appear to have been to exclude, by the fewest and fittest words (besides children of members of the Indian tribes, standing in a peculiar relation to the National Government, unknown to the common law), the two classes of cases — children born of alien enemies in hostile occupation and children of diplomatic representatives of a foreign State — both of which, as has already been shown, by the law of England and by our own law from the time of the first settlement of the English colonies in America, had been recognized exceptions to the fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the country.”
There is NO DIFFERENCE between a NBC and a 14th Amendment citizen - they embody the same people “by the fewest and fittest words”...
FYI: Ted Cruz’s father wasn’t a US citizen until 2005.
Cheers!