George Romney, the father of Mitt Romney who ran for president as a Republican in 1968, was born in Mexico. Incidentally, this isn’t the first time the qualifications of a candidate have come into question. Many members of the inaugural Congress were also authors of the Constitution. citizens were, too, natural born citizens. "The framers, of course, would have been intimately familiar with these statutes and the way they used terms like ‘natural born,’ since the (British) statutes were binding law in the colonies before the Revolutionary War,’" they said.Īdditionally, the first Congress of the United States passed the Naturalization Act of 1790, just three years after the Constitution was written, which stated that children born abroad to U.S. They wrote that "natural born" had a longstanding definition dating back to colonial times.īritish common law recognized that children born outside of the British Empire remained subjects, and were described by law as "natural born," Katyal and Clement wrote. Those precedents were the subject of a recent op-ed in the Harvard Law Review by two former solicitor generals of opposing parties, Neal Katyal and Paul Clement, who worked for Presidents Barack Obama and George W. There are many legal and historical precedents to strongly back up this argument, experts have said. The Congressional Research Service, the agency tasked with providing authoritative research to all members of Congress, published a report after the 2008 election supporting the thinking that "natural born" citizenship means citizenship held "at birth." If that’s the definition, then Cruz is a natural born citizen by being born to an American mother and having her citizenship at birth. Most legal experts contend it means someone is a citizen from birth and doesn’t have to go through a naturalization process to become a citizen. What does it mean to be a "natural born citizen"? The third qualification: He or she must be a "natural born citizen." Two provisions are obvious: The candidate must be 35 years of age and a resident of the United States for 14 years. As we found back then, the constitutional requirements for a presidential candidate created by the Founding Fathers are concise but not readily clear. We first looked into this issue in 2013 but decided to look again now that Cruz has formally announced. Most legal scholars maintain that Cruz is in the clear despite his Canadian birthplace.īut is the issue 100 percent settled? Not exactly. (A situation similar to Obama, whose mother was born in Kansas and father was African.) In 2013, the first-term senator - already considered a prospective presidential candidate - released his birth certificate, which shows his mother was born in Delaware and his father was born in Cuba. Cruz grew up in Texas and graduated from high school there, later attending Princeton University and Harvard Law School. His family was living there because his father was working for the oil industry at the time. So can Cruz run? He likely can, just as Obama could have even if he were born in Kenya - which, again, he most certainly wasn’t.Ĭruz - full name: Rafael Edward Cruz - was born in Calgary, Canada, in 1970. And so far the challenges to his candidacy are few and far between. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, was born outside the United States, a fact he willingly offered.Ĭruz, who was born in Canada, has maintained there are no constitutional barriers that prevent him from running. Now, the first candidate to throw his hat in the ring for the 2016 presidential contest, Sen. The conspiracists died down, but they remained. He released the short form of his birth certificate to prove he was born in Hawaii. For most of his presidential campaign and much of his presidency, President Barack Obama endured erroneous claims that he was born in Kenya rather than the United States.
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