I had never bothered to research this myself directly before, but I have done so now. Cruz is NOT a naturalized citizen, he is a natural born citizen, born of an American citizen mother while she was in Canada and is therefore eligible under our constitution. Though he was entitled to Canadian citizenship, he has renounced it and has no ties to Canada.
There is no question on Governor Jindal, because he was born in Baton Rouge Louisiana.
<Section 1 of Article Two of the United States Constitution sets forth the eligibility requirements for serving as president of the United States:
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; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.>
I certainly understand some folks may want the constitution to say something else on the qualifications for president, and they are even free to vote their interpretation of they way they think it should have been said, but it says what it says. If either of these people are lawfully elected to the presidency, they will serve, and no court will stop them, based on what I can see.
<The weight of legal and historical authority indicates that the term "natural born" citizen would mean a person who is entitled to U.S. citizenship "by birth" or "at birth," either by being born "in" the United States and under its jurisdiction, even those born to alien parents; by being born abroad to U.S. citizen-parents; or by being born in other situations meeting legal requirements for U.S. citizenship "at birth." Such term, however, would not include a person who was not a U.S. citizen by birth or at birth, and who was thus born an "alien" required to go through the legal process of "naturalization" to become a U.S. citizen.[1]>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural-born-citizen_clause<Court decisions
Although eligibility for the Presidency was not an issue in any 19th-century litigation, there have been a few cases that shed light on "natural-born citizen". The leading case is Lynch v. Clarke,[34] (mentioned by Attorney-General Bates in his 1862 opinion quoted above) which dealt with a New York law (similar to laws of other states at that time) that only a U.S. citizen could inherit real estate. The plaintiff, Julia Lynch, had been born in New York while her parents, both British, were briefly visiting the U.S., and shortly thereafter all three left for Britain and never returned to the U.S. The New York Chancery Court determined that, under common law and prevailing statutes, she was a U.S. citizen by birth and nothing had deprived her of that citizenship, notwithstanding that both her parents were not U.S. citizens or that British law might also claim her through her parents' nationality. In the course of the decision, the court cited the Constitutional provision and said:
Suppose a person should be elected president who was native born, but of alien parents; could there be any reasonable doubt that he was eligible under the Constitution? I think not. The position would be decisive in his favor, that by the rule of the common law, in force when the Constitution was adopted, he is a citizen.[35]
And further:
Upon principle, therefore, I can entertain no doubt, but that by the law of the United States, every person born within the dominions and allegiance of the United States, whatever the situation of his parents, is a natural born citizen. It is surprising that there has been no judicial decision upon this question.[36]
The decision in Lynch v. Clarke was cited as persuasive or authoritative precedent in numerous subsequent cases, including In re Look Tin Sing,[37] on the issue of whether the child, born in the U.S., to two Chinese parents (who were prevented by federal law from becoming U.S. citizens) was a U.S. citizen, notwithstanding the nationality of his parents or the fact that he had traveled to China with them and not returned to the U.S. for many years. The federal court held in a decision written by U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen J. Field) that he was a citizen by birth, and remained such despite his long stay in China, cited the decision in Lynch v. Clarke and described that case:
After an exhaustive examination of the law, the Vice-Chancellor said that he entertained no doubt that every person born within the dominions and allegiance of the United States, whatever the situation of his parents, was a natural-born citizen, and added that this was the general understanding of the legal profession, and the universal impression of the public mind.[38]
The Lynch case was also cited as a leading precedent in the U.S. Supreme Court decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898),[39] which similarly held that the child born in the United States of two Chinese parents was a birthright US citizen, and that decision also used the phrase "natural born".[40]
In 1939 the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in the case of Perkins v. Elg, regarding a young woman, born in New York a year after her father became a naturalized U.S. citizen. However, when she was about four her parents returned to Sweden taking her with them, and they stayed in Sweden. At age 20, this young woman contacted the American diplomats in Sweden and, shortly after her 21st birthday, returned to the United States on a U.S. passport and was admitted as a U.S. citizen. Years later, while she was still in America, her father in Sweden relinquished his American citizenship, and, because of that, the Department of Labor (then the location of the Immigration & Naturalization Service) declared her a non-citizen and tried to deport her. The young woman filed suit for a declaratory judgment that she was an American citizen by birth. She won at the trial level, and at the circuit court—where she was repeatedly described as "a natural born citizen" [41] — and finally in the U.S. Supreme Court, where the court decision quoted at length from the U.S. Attorney-General's opinion in Steinkauler's Case (mentioned above) including the comment that the person born in America and raised in another country could yet "become President of the United States".[42]
On July 9, 2010, a three-judge panel of the United States court of appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that a Philippine-born litigant could not claim U.S. citizenship on the basis of his parents, who lived all their lives in the Philippines, because they were born while the Philippines was U.S. territory prior to being given its independence. The Courts for the Second, Third and Ninth Circuits have also held that birth in the Philippines at a time when the country was a territory of the United States does not constitute birth "in the United States" under the Citizenship Clause, and thus did not give rise to United States citizenship.[43]>
These questions appear to me as a settled matter of law, based on court decisions that appear to have direct application.
Any person may vote against them and even campaign against them, asserting what you will. But, IF elected, I see no real question of their eligibility based on constitutional law.
