- 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
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.
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
- Recall that McCain --
- lately one of Cruz's chief antagonists
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
So the one remaining question is
- whether Ted Cruz was a citizen at birth.
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 - -
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.
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
- who John Jay and George Washington were concerned might usurp the role of Commander in Chief."
Cruz’s father’s Cuban nationality at the time of Cruz’s birth, is irrelevant, according to the law at that time, just so long as he was a LEGAL Immigrant at the time of Ted Cruz's birth, AND both of Ted Cruz's parents were legally married to each other.
- So THINK with your brain and not your emotions"
What are the rules for people born between December 23, 1952 and November 13, 1986?
- The 14th Amendment IS a part of the U.S. Constitution and states in SECTION 5.
- The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
- When ONE parent was a US citizen and the other a foreign national,
- the US citizen parent must have resided in the US for a total of 10 years prior to the birth of the child,
- with five of the years after the age of 14.
... While there were initially rules regarding what the child must do to retain citizenship,
- amendments since 1952 HAVE ELIMINATED THESE REQUIREMENTS.
When Ted Cruz was born, his parents were "IN WEDLOCK".
They married, moved to Calgary, Alberta, and in late 1970 had their first and only child, Rafael Edward Cruz.
Cruz was born on December 22, 1970 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada where his parents, Eleanor Elizabeth Darragh Wilson and Rafael Bienvenido Cruz.
Cruz's mother was born and raised in Wilmington, Delaware, in a family of three quarters Irish and one quarter Italian descent.
Eleanor Darragh, mother of Ted Cruz, was raised in Delaware, graduated from a Catholic High School (1952) in the U.S., as well as Rice University (1956),
- so clearly she meets the residency requirements.
Source
In 1957, Rafael Bienvenido Cruz (Ted Cruz's father) decided to get out of Cuba by applying to the University of Texas.Upon being admitted, he adds, he got a four-year student visa at the U.S. Consulate in Havana.
"Since he liked to eat seven days a week, he worked seven days a week, and he paid his way through the University of Texas," Ted Cruz says of his father, "and then ended up getting a job and eventually going on to start a small business and to work towards the American dream."
Only he did that in Canada, where Ted was born.
His father went there after having earlier obtained political asylum in the U.S. when his student visa ran out.
He then got a green card, he says, and married Ted's mother, an American citizen.
The two of them moved to Canada to work in the oil industry.
"I worked in Canada for eight years," Rafael Cruz says. "And while I was in Canada, I became a Canadian citizen."
The elder Cruz says he renounced his Canadian citizenship when he finally became a U.S. citizen in 2005 —
- 48 years after leaving Cuba.
- "I don't know. I guess laziness, or — I don't know," he says.
AND HOW Ted Cruz's PARENTS fulfilled ALL those requirements of the law that time, for Ted Cruz to be a "Natural Born Citizen".
Ted Cruz did NOT NEED a Court and a Judge to "Nationalize" him.
- “Senator Cruz became a U.S. citizen at birth, and he never had to go through a naturalization process after birth to become a U.S. citizen,” said spokeswoman Catherine Frazier.
... The U.S. Constitution allows only a “natural born” American citizen to serve as president.
Most legal scholars who have studied the question agree that includes an American born overseas to an American parent, such as Cruz.