Ted Cuz Ineligible to Be President of the US?

[klr]

Well, the only way any birthers are going to get away with defending Cruz's eligibility is to torpedo their own.

Also, I don't think the argument regarding Cruz is all that clear... I think there is an eligibility question for people born abroad. It certainly is not settled in the constitution and it is not settled in the courts, and even the State department acknowledges that.

That makes sense to me. Re the "natural born citizen" term: It's another one of those cases where those drafting the Constitution must have assumed that the meaning was self-evident, and did not need to be spelled out. Except that it's not at all obvious what it might mean, let alone what those who drafted the Constitution thought it meant.

[Coito ergo sum]

That's a weird law and leaves a lot of questions in my mind - it seems to allow a person who was born in say, Chechnya to a US citizen parent to move to the US 17 years later, never having been in the US and acquire citizenship just by entering into the US as an immigrant. Seems weird. That aside, whether a person is a citizen is one thing -- the question of whether one is a Natural Born Citizen is another. All natural born citizens are citizens, but not all citizens are natural born.

He's not "acquiring" citizenship - he was a citizen at birth due to at least one of his parents having been a citizen at his birth. He just doesn't happen to have gotten his passport until 17, which is not unusual for U.S. citizens.

This isn't something that started in 2001; my family was residing overseas when my brother was born in 1961 and he was on a U.S. passport by the time we moved back in 1962. You may consider it weird, but that's just a matter of opinion. I don't see any problem with U.S. citizens living overseas. McCain was born outside the United States too, and no one questioned his right to run in 2008.

"Natural born citizen" may not have been explicitly interpreted by the Supreme Court, but the general legal interpretation is "citizen at birth".

The Immigration and Nationality Act states something like this:

A child born abroad to one U.S. citizen parent and one alien parent acquires U.S. citizenship at birth under Section 301(g) of the INA provided the U.S. citizen parent was physically present in the United States or one of its outlying possessions for the time period required by the law applicable at the time of the child's birth. (For birth on or after November 14, 1986, a period of five years physical presence, two after the age of fourteen, is required. For birth between December 24, 1952 and November 13, 1986, a period of ten years, five after the age of fourteen, is required for physical presence in the United States or one of its outlying possessions to transmit U.S. citizenship to the child.) The U.S. citizen parent must be genetically related to the child to transmit U.S. citizenship.

http://travel.state.gov/law/citizenship ... _5199.html

So, at a minimum, it is not merely "born abroad to US citizen mother = US citizenship" -- there is and was a residency requirement.

This does not, of course, settle the issue of natural born citizen, but it does indicate how citizenship would have been acquired by Cruz in 1970 when he was born, provided his mom met the residency requirement.

I have a vague recollection of it mattering whether the US citizen parent intended to immigrate to the foreign country or whether it was a temporary stay in that foreign country. I'm not finding it, so I may be wrong, but that bit is nagging at me.