NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Monday, March 23, 2015, 2:16 PM
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), who announced his 2016 presidential run on Monday, has faced questions over his eligibility for the presidency because he was born in Canada.
Don’t expect Sen. Ted Cruz to get the same “birther” treatment that President Obama received during his presidential campaign.
The Texas Republican, who on Monday formally announced his 2016 presidential bid, was born in Canada in 1970, sparking chatter in recent years that he did not meet the constitutional requirement that to be eligible to run for the presidency, one must be a natural-born U.S. citizen.
Cruz, who was born to an American mother and a Cuban father who immigrated to the U.S. and later became a naturalized citizen, has repeatedly maintained that he, as the child of a woman who was a U.S. citizen from Delaware, is a natural-born citizen.
Critics have claimed that his being born in Canada indicates he’s not a natural-born citizen.
In fact, the U.S. Constitution simply says that “no person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.”
While a fringe minority of scholars claim that a “natural-born” citizen must have been born on U.S. soil, the prevailing legal interpretation is that “natural-born” simply means being born with U.S. citizen (as opposed to acquiring it later via naturalization).
A detailed memo produced by the Congressional Research Service in 2009 — to help quell “birthers” claiming that President Obama hadn’t been eligible for the presidency — largely, if not altogether, put the issue to rest.
“The weight of scholarly legal and historical opinion appears to support the notion that 'natural born Citizen' means one who is entitled under the Constitution or laws of the United States to U.S. citizenship 'at birth' or 'by birth,' including any child born 'in' the United States, the children of United States citizens born abroad, and those born abroad of one citizen parents who has met U.S. residency requirements," the agency said in the memo.
Two prominent legal scholars addressed the issue more recently in a Harvard Law Review article published earlier this month, writing “that here is no question that Sen. Cruz has been a citizen from birth and is thus a ‘natural born Citizen’ within the meaning of the Constitution.”
‘Birthers’ claimed that President Obama may have been born in either Kenya (where his father was born) or Indonesia (where Obama spent a few years as a child), but all theories were debunked once and for all after Obama released his long-form birth certificate.
“As Congress has recognized since the Founding, a person born abroad to a U.S. citizen parent is generally a U.S. citizen from birth with no need for naturalization,” Neal Katyal and Paul Clement wrote in their article. “And the phrase ‘natural born Citizen’ in the Constitution encompasses all such citizens from birth … Thus, an individual born to a U.S. citizen parent — whether in California or Canada or the Canal Zone — is a U.S. citizen from birth and is fully eligible to serve as President if the people so choose.”
Scholars agree that the only reason there still exists even the slightest gray area regarding the issue is that the question has never been tested in the U.S. court system.
In an effort to dispel any doubt, Cruz has released his birth certificate and renounced his Canadian citizenship after a Texas newspaper noted in 2013 that he may technically have possessed dual citizenship in the U.S. and Canada.
President Obama notoriously faced similar questions, albeit more persistently, about his own citizenship during the 2008 presidential race and well into his first term in office.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) faced questions over his own presidential eligibility during his 2008 run because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936.
Obama had long maintained he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, making him a natural-born U.S citizen, but an aggressive “birther” movement, seizing on the fact that Obama’s father was from Kenya, claimed that the President may have actually been born there. Others claimed that he was born in Indonesia, where he lived for four years as a child.
Both theories have been repeatedly debunked, but the matter didn’t entirely disappear until Obama, whose mother, like Cruz's, was a U.S. citizen, released his long-form birth certificate in 2011, proving that he was born in Hawaii.
There is no record, however, that Cruz, who has ripped Obama as a “lawless impersonator” and criticized him on everything from his landmark health care law to his foreign policy, ever weighed in himself on the Obama birther controversy — a silence that is likely due to the fact that Cruz hadn’t even yet announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate at the height of the controversy.
Nevertheless, the two lawmakers are far from the first politicians to have faced questions over their constitutional eligibility for the presidency.
George Romney faced similar questions in 1968 because he was born in Mexico to American parents who were working there as missionaries.
In, 2008, questions emerged over the eligibility of GOP nominee John McCain, who was born in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936 while his father, a Navy officer, was stationed there.
And in 1968, George Romney, who was running for the GOP presidential nomination, faced similar questions because he was born in Mexico while his American Mormon parents were working as missionaries there.
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