[Yosemitest]

The Naturalization Act of 1790, let's read it , too ( even though it DOES NOT APPLY) !

United States Congress, "An act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization" (March 26, 1790).

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled,

That any Alien being a free white person,
who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years,
may be admitted to become a citizen thereof on application to any common law Court of record in any one of the States
wherein he shall have resided for the term of one year at least,
and making proof to the satisfaction of such Court  that
he is a person of good character,
and taking the oath or affirmation prescribed by law
to support the Constitution of the United States,
which Oath or Affirmation such Court shall administer,
and the Clerk of such Court shall record such Application, and the proceedings thereon;
and thereupon such person shall be considered as a Citizen of the United States. 


And the children of such person 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
no person heretofore proscribed by any States, shall be admitted a citizen as aforesaid,
except by an Act of the Legislature of the State in which such person was proscribed.

"Ohhhh noooooooooooooo..."!
Mr. Bill !
Listen to a REAL CONSTITUTIONAL LAWYER:

MARK LEVIN explains that Ted Cruz IS a natural born citizen ( 7:30 )
Published on Sep 17, 2013

Here's the supporting article from Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow in constitutional studies and editor-in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review.
Like most immigrants, he does a job Americans won't: defending the Constitution.

Yes, Ted Cruz Can be President
August 26, 2013., by Ilya Shapiro

As we head into a potential government shutdown over the funding of Obamacare, the iconoclastic junior senator from Texas - - love him or hate him - - continues to stride across the national stage.
With his presidential aspirations as big as everything in his home state, by now many know what has never been a secret:
Ted Cruz was born in Canada.

(Full disclosure: I'm Canadian myself, with a green card.
Also, Cruz has been a friend since his days representing Texas before the Supreme Court.)

But does that mean that Cruz's presidential ambitions are gummed up with maple syrup
or stuck in snowdrifts altogether different from those plaguing the Iowa caucuses?
Are the birthers now hoist on their own petards,
having been unable to find any proof that President Obama was born outside the United States
but forcing their comrade-in-boots to disqualify himself by releasing his Alberta birth certificate?

No, actually, and it's not even that complicated; you just have to look up the right law.
It boils down to whether Cruz is a "natural born citizen" of the United States,
the only class of people constitutionally eligible for the presidency.
(The Founding Fathers didn't want their newly independent nation to be taken over by foreigners on the sly.)

What's a "natural born citizen" ?
The Constitution doesn't say,
but the Framers' understanding, combined with statutes enacted by the First Congress, indicate that
the phrase means both birth abroad to American parents - - in a manner regulated by federal law - -
and birth within the nation's territory regardless of parental citizenship.
The Supreme Court has confirmed that definition on multiple occasions in various contexts.

There's no ideological debate here:
Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe and former solicitor general Ted Olson - -
who were on opposite sides in Bush v. Gore among other cases
- - co-authored a memorandum in March 2008 detailing the above legal explanation in the context of John McCain's eligibility.
Recall that McCain --
lately one of Cruz's chief antagonists
- - was born to U.S. citizen parents serving on a military base in the Panama Canal Zone.

In other words, anyone who is a citizen at birth - -
as opposed to someone who becomes a citizen later ("naturalizes"
or who isn't a citizen at all
- - can be president.

So the one remaining question is
whether Ted Cruz was a citizen at birth.
That's an easy one.
The Nationality Act of 1940 outlines which children become "nationals and citizens of the United States at birth."
In addition to those who are born in the United States or born outside the country to parents who were both citizens - -
or, interestingly, found in the United States without parents and no proof of birth elsewhere - -
citizenship goes to babies born to one American parent who has spent a certain number of years here.

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.

So why all the brouhaha about where Obama was born, given that there's no dispute that his mother, Ann Dunham, was a citizen?
Because his mother was 18 when she gave birth to the future president in 1961
and so couldn't have met the 5-year-post-age-14 residency requirement.
Had Obama been born a year later, it wouldn't have mattered whether that birth took place in
Hawaii,
Kenya,
Indonesia,
or anywhere else.
(For those born since 1986, by the way,
the single citizen parent must have only resided here for five years,
at least two of which must be after the age of 14.)

In short, it may be politically advantageous for Ted Cruz to renounce his Canadian citizenship before making a run at the White House,
but his eligibility for that office shouldn't be in doubt.
As Tribe and Olson said about McCain - -
and could've said about
Obama,
or the Mexico-born George Romney,
or the Arizona-territory-born Barry Goldwater
- - Cruz "is certainly NOT the hypothetical 'foreigner'
who John Jay and George Washington were concerned might usurp the role of Commander in Chief."

[jonrick46]

The real question is whether citizenship is the same as the framer’s definition of natural born citizen. That has never been tested in the courts. And, because it is untested, the Democrats will make full use of its consequences.

[Godebert]

Not much information exists on why the Third Congress (under the lead of James Madison and the approval of George Washington) deleted "natural born" from the Naturalization Act of 1790 when it passed the Naturalization Act of 1795. There is virtually no information on the subject because they probably realized that the First Congress committed errors when it passed the Naturalization Act of 1790 and did not want to create a record of the errors.

It can be reasonably argued that Congress realized that under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, Congress is given the power to make uniform laws on naturalization and that this power did not include the power to decide who is included or excluded from being a presidential Article II "natural born Citizen." While Congress has passed throughout United States history many statutes declaring who shall be considered nationals and citizens of the United States at birth and thereby exempting such persons from having to be naturalized under naturalization laws, at no time except by way of the short-lived "natural born" phrase in Naturalization Act of 1790 did it ever declare these persons to be "natural born Citizens."

The uniform definition of "natural born Citizen" was already provided by the law of nations and was already settled. The Framers therefore saw no need nor did they give Congress the power to tinker with that definition. Believing that Congress was highly vulnerable to foreign influence and intrigue, the Framers, who wanted to keep such influence out of the presidency, did not trust Congress when it came to who would be President, and would not have given Congress the power to decide who shall be President by allowing it to define what an Article II "natural born Citizen" is.

Additionally, the 1790 act was a naturalization act. How could a naturalization act make anyone an Article II "natural born Citizen?" After all, a "natural born Citizen" was made by nature at the time of birth and could not be so made by any law of man.

Natural Born Citizen Through the Eyes of Early Congresses

[Godebert]

Harvard Law Review Article FAILS to Establish Ted Cruz as Natural Born Citizen