Thread: 'Natural Born' Issue for Ted Cruz Is Not Settled and Not Going Away

Originally Posted by artist

The settlers and Constitution drawers were of course from Europe and they, rightfully so, set rules for the future of America accentuating "natural born".

Is it not the country that everyone seems to want "to be here" because of THEIR efforts of establishing a NEW COUNTRY, #1 IN THE WORLD - not to be overtaken by SNEAKER ILLEGALS NOR DECEITFUL UNDERHANDED MUSLIMS
- BOTH BY TREASON HAVE BEEN LET INTO THE USA.

Exactly. The Founders knew the risk and the only savior of that is really the White House that is tied to sole loyalty to the US through the natural born citizen clause. That doesn't mean they may be bad Presidents, it just means that if they are, it's not because of a tie through non-citizen parents or birthright citizenship in a foreign country so it's some protection.

And history has proven it. The only elected President who was not a natural born citizen is Barack Obama who is the one who is bucking the people and our States over Executive Orders on guns and illegal aliens. That's before we even talk about Obama Care and forcing a bad insurance mandate down our throats.

artist wrote:

Cruz has not presented the documents re his mother's, father's citizenship timing etc. - STRANGE, THAT IT HAS NOT BEEN PRESENTED BY CRUZ BY NOW. Rubio is a so called "anchor baby" and is no way qualified for POTUS OR VP

Actually he has.

Ted Cruz released his mother's birth certificate on Friday after his opponents and critics raised concerns about the Republican Senator's Canadian birth and his eligibility to run for president.

Eleanor Darragh, mother of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), was born in Delaware on Nov. 23, 1934, establishing her citizenship by birth -- and, according to U.S. law, that of her son, even though he was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, on Dec. 22, 1970,' says the birth certificate,' according to Breitbart News.

'She was in Canada on a work permit and never became a permanent resident, let alone a citizen,' said Jason Johnson who works as a chief strategist for the Cruz campaign.
'She never registered to vote and never applied for Canadian citizenship.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...gible-run.html

http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/Te...Birth_Cert.pdf

Explain this Rafael...

Ted Cruz Mom Appears on 1974 Canadian Voter List

http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/ted-...#ixzz3wnrQ3WWJ

Originally Posted by artist

Explain this Rafael...

Ted Cruz Mom Appears on 1974 Canadian Voter List

http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/ted-...#ixzz3wnrQ3WWJ

Wow, what a shot in the dark. The story itself is fairly self-explanatory. Besides that, newsmax.com didn't provide the whole story. The full story is posted below. Once you read the story, I think you'll better understand why this is a non-issue and is just another attempt to muddy the facts.

Excerpt from the newsmax.com story:

"The document itself does not purport to be a list of 'registered Canadian voters'," the campaign statement said. "All this might conceivably establish is that this list of individuals (maybe) lived at the given addresses. It says nothing about who was a citizen eligible to vote."

She was there under a work permit. Under Canadian law she would not have been eligible for Canadian citizenship when Ted Cruz was born. From what I've read she was there for only seven years and returned back to the United States when Ted was four years old. Ted's mother meets all the requirements that make him a natural born citizen.

Perhaps the full story will explain things better:

Exclusive: 1974 Canadian Electors’ List Named Ted Cruz’s Parents


by JOEL B. POLLAK8 Jan 2016

A document uncovered by Breitbart News indicates that the parents of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) were named on a Calgary list of electors for Canada’s federal election of July 8, 1974.

Ted Cruz’s parents are listed as “Cruz, Eleanor, Mrs.” and “Cruz, Raphael, self employed,” both at 920 Riverdale Avenue, South West in Calgary, Alberta.

Canadian law restricts (and restricted) federal voting rights to Canadian citizens.
In a statement to Breitbart News—the full text of which follows this article—Jason Johnson, chief strategist for Cruz for President, said that “the document itself does not purport to be a list of ‘registered Canadian voters.’ All this might conceivably establish is that this list of individuals (maybe) lived at the given addresses. It says nothing about who was a citizen eligible to vote.”

Johnson added: “Eleanor was never a citizen of Canada, and she could not have been under the facts or the law. In short, she did not live in Canada long enough to be a Canadian citizen by the time Cruz was born in 1970: Canadian law required 5 years of permanent residence, and she moved to Canada in December 1967—only 3 years before Senator Cruz’s birth.”
The document is a “preliminary list of electors,” and not a record of those who actually voted. Such lists were also prone to error, according to Breitbart News sources.
Voters List by Breitbart News

At the time, voters’ lists in Canada were compiled through “enumeration” by registrars going door-to-door.

According to Elections Canada–the independent, non-partisan agency that runs Canadian elections–“voters were sent a copy of the list showing the name, address and occupation of all voters in the relevant poll.”

Mistakes were frequent (i.e. “Raphael” instead of “Rafael”), and voters were given the opportunity to fix errors.

Ezra Levant, a Canadian conservative journalist who was born and raised in Calgary, recalled the process of enumeration.

“It was like a census… they were very quick and non-obtrusive visits, someone standing in your doorstep,” he told Breitbart News via e-mail. “They certainly didn’t ask for ID.

“It is not surprising to me that there may be a spelling error in someone’s name. A name appearing on the list would not necessarily indicate that they were a citizen, or that they themselves had even spoken to the enumerator—someone else in the household may have spoken for them,” Levant added.

Cruz’s father, Rafael Bienvenido Cruz, has confirmed taking Canadian citizenship.
The Cruz campaign told Breitbart News on Friday that Cruz’s American-born mother, Eleanor Elizabeth Wilson (née Darragh), had never done so.

“She was in Canada on a work permit and never became a permanent resident, let alone a citizen,” Johnson said.

“She never registered to vote and never applied for Canadian citizenship.”
Canadian immigration authorities declined a request by Breitbart News for additional documents, citing Canadian privacy laws.

Under U.S. law, Cruz would have inherited his citizenship at birth in 1970 from his mother, provided she remained a U.S. citizen. She likely would have retained her U.S. citizenship even if she had become a naturalized Canadian citizen, though Canadian law required naturalized citizens formally to renounce all foreign allegiances until 1973.

The home at which Ted Cruz’s parents were listed by registrars is different from the home in which they lived when he was born.

Breitbart News spoke to the current homeowner at the Riverdale Avenue address, who said that the home, built in 1960, had two previous owners, neither of which was the Cruz family.
At the time of Ted Cruz’s birth, the Cruz family had lived in what the National Post has described as a “stucco-walled, Spanish-colonial-style Calgary home” near the Foothills Medical Centre, roughly six miles northwest of the Riverdale Avenue home.

Journalist Gillian Steward, who socialized with the Cruz family at the time, told Breitbart News that the Cruz family had rented the home near the hospital.

“I knew that she was an American and he was Cuban,” she said of Ted Cruz’s parents, noting that it was common for foreigners to be in town without becoming citizens, especially working in the oil industry.

She said she knew them well for “about a year” around the time when Ted Cruz was born, when she also had a daughter, but lost touch after that.

In his recent book, A Time for Truth: Reigniting the Promise of America, Sen. Cruz writes that his parents met through work and moved to Canada together:

“After meeting each other at Geocom in New Orleans, my parents had moved to Canada to continue working in the oil and gas industry. They formed their own seismic data processing company to help oil companies search for new reserves. They were both mathematicians and computer programmers, and together they wrote the proprietary software for their business. The name of the company was R.B. Cruz and Associates.” (p. 30)

Sen. Cruz adds (p.31) that he remembers little else from his childhood in Calgary, though his parents were drinking heavily, and his father “left my mother and me in December 1974.”
The elder Cruz had a religious awakening in Houston the following year and returned to his family: “Shortly thereafter they sold their business in Calgary [in 1975] and moved us down to Houston, where my mother also became a born-again Christian. Both of them quit drinking, and their lives were transformed.” (p. 32)

Steward told Breitbart News that it was unusual for Americans working in the country to seek Canadian citizenship.

She said she knew many Americans who have “been here a long, long time” without seeking Canadian citizenship, apparently for fear of compromising their American citizenship.
In 2013, Steward recalled her relationship with the Cruz family in an article in the Toronto Star, writing that “Eleanor was very much a reserved east coast American who never seemed really at home in Calgary.”

“It seems kind of weird that they would want to vote,” she told Breitbart News. “I don’t remember a lot of political discussions or anything like that.”

“Most Americans who come to work here—they’re just not that interested in local politics because it doesn’t mean anything to them. It doesn’t change their life.”

Immigration attorney Joshua Goldstein told Breitbart News that Ted Cruz would still be a natural-born citizen, and eligible for the presidency, even if his mother had taken Canadian citizenship, whether before or after his birth.

“She could vote in Canada, and it wouldn’t affect her U.S. citizenship,” he added.
“The fact that his mother might have been Canadian at birth, as well as American at birth, would be irrelevant.”
***
The Cruz campaign offered the following statement exclusively to Breitbart News, presented in full (original emphasis):

Eleanor was never a citizen of Canada, and she could not have been under the facts or the law. In short, she did not live in Canada long enough to be a Canadian citizen by the time Cruz was born in 1970: Canadian law required 5 years of permanent residence, and she moved to Canada in December 1967—only 3 years before Senator Cruz’s birth. Nothing in the document you sent shows anything to the contrary.

First, the document itself does not purport to be a list of “registered Canadian voters.” All this might conceivably establish is that this list of individuals (maybe) lived at the given addresses. It says nothing about who was a citizen eligible to vote.

The document itself states that it is a “preliminary list of electors” subject to “corrections in, deletions from and additions to the said preliminary list.”

And corrections, deletions, and additions were commonplace because of the informal process by which names were gathered: As the document makes clear, names were “enumerated during a recent house to house visitation . . . by a pair of urban enumerators.” In other words, clerical staff would go door-to-door and collect names and addresses—even if people weren’t home, and even if they weren’t citizens of Canada.

Second, the document is from 1974. That is four years after Senator Cruz was born, so even if this document said anything about citizenship—and it does not—it would be irrelevant to the citizenship status of his mother at the time of his birth, which is the only relevant status for determining Cruz’s natural-born citizenship.

Third, Eleanor was never a citizen of Canada; she never applied for Canadian citizenship or permanent residence. Instead, she spent her time in Canada under a work permit.

Fourth, even if Eleanor had wanted to become a citizen of Canada, she could not have become a citizen by the time of Cruz’s birth in 1970 because she had not lived in Canada for long enough. Under Canadian law (see attached statute), a person may apply to become a citizen if they (a) are a permanent resident and (b) have “resided in Canada for at least five of the eight years immediately preceding the date of the application.”

Eleanor never became a permanent resident. Eleanor had lived in Canada for only three years by the time Cruz was born (from 1967 to 1970). Note that Cruz’s father, Rafael did become a Canadian citizen in 1973; Eleanor never did and therefore could never have registered to vote.

Regardless of Canadian law, under U.S. law—which is ultimately all that matters—you do not give up U.S. citizenship without the express intent to do so. Eleanor never gave up her U.S. citizenship and the U.S. government has always recognized her as a U.S. citizen, since her birth in Delaware.

Finally, top constitutional lawyers in the country under Presidents Obama (Neal Katyal) and Bush (Paul Clement) conclusively agree that “[d]espite the happenstance of birth across the border, there is no question that Senator Cruz has been a citizen from birth and is thus a ‘natural born Citizen’ within the meaning of the Constitution” because he was born of an American-citizen mother.

There is no question that Eleanor was born in Delaware as an American citizen.

And as described above, Eleanor never relinquished her citizenship, so she was a U.S. citizen when Senator Cruz was born, and he is a natural-born citizen under the Constitution.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...a-voters-list/

There it is in a nutshell, Eleanor Cruz was is not, and has never been, a Canadian citizen.

I'm not sure the "chief strategist for the Cruz campaign" is an unbiased source of facts about Canadian citizenship when Ted Cruz claims he didn't even know he was a Canadian citizen until the Dallas Morning News, ran a story on it.

As to the residency requirement, her husband Rafael Sr became a Canadian Citizen. They moved there at the same time.

I'm not sure the "chief strategist for the Cruz campaign" is an unbiased source of facts about Canadian citizenship

Exactly the reason to show the article's link - neither is Heidi's announcing "he's eligible" a for sure fact.

Something is fishy @ what he & his campaign are not evidencing......

When one holds a dual citizenship, you receive notice re elections and other asst'd concerns, taxes etc. His claim of not knowing he was a Canadian citizen is another mysterious statement.

Regardless, he can't win states across the USA - maybe his own territory he could. That is not a candidate to beat the Dems.

Originally Posted by Judy

I'm not sure the "chief strategist for the Cruz campaign" is an unbiased source of facts about Canadian citizenship when Ted Cruz claims he didn't even know he was a Canadian citizen until the Dallas Morning News, ran a story on it.

As to the residency requirement, her husband Rafael Sr became a Canadian Citizen. They moved there at the same time.

Ted Cruz's father citizenship isn't what's in question here. Obviously he has been a citizen of Mexico, legal U.S. Resident, Canadian citizen, and now a U.S. citizen. Ted Cruz is a U.S. natural born citizen by virtue of his mothers birth and citizenship, not his fathers.

You're right, Cruz's campaign manager probably isn't an unbiased source, but I suspect he is intelligent enough not to lie. What exactly is it he has said that you think is a lie?

Originally Posted by artist

Exactly the reason to show the article's link - neither is Heidi's announcing "he's eligible" a for sure fact.

Something is fishy @ what he & his campaign are not evidencing......

When one holds a dual citizenship, you receive notice re elections and other asst'd concerns, taxes etc. His claim of not knowing he was a Canadian citizen is another mysterious statement.

Regardless, he can't win states across the USA - maybe his own territory he could. That is not a candidate to beat the Dems.

I'm not basing his eligibility on what "Heidi" says. I'm basing it on what the majority of legal experts and scholars have said. I'm sure they're more knowledgeable on this issue than you or I.

Personally, don't smell or see anything fishy. Cruz has never hide anything on this. He has been transparent on this from the beginning.

No, one holding dual citizenship, when out of country, doesn't typically receive the information you've identified. You must be assuming Cruz notified Canada of his every residence change and so forth. Why would he do this, he has never participated in anything Canadian from what I understand. Remember, he left Canada with his mother at age 4.

If Trump doesn't win the nomination, who would your second choice be? Would you prefer someone like Jeb Bush or maybe Marco Rubio? Not me, I'd much rather have Ted Cruz. If Trump implodes, which is possible, I would take comfort in knowing Cruz is still running 2nd. Yes, I think Cruz can win, especially in view of Hillary's legal problems. Additionally, I think the Democrats are going to lose a lot of their black voters this time around due to lack of interest.

Originally Posted by MW

Ted Cruz's father citizenship isn't what's in question here. Obviously he has been a citizen of Mexico, legal U.S. Resident, Canadian citizen, and now a U.S. citizen. Ted Cruz is a U.S. natural born citizen by virtue of his mothers birth and citizenship, not his fathers.

You're right, Cruz's campaign manager probably isn't an unbiased source, but I suspect he is intelligent enough not to lie. What exactly is it he has said that you think is a lie?

The father's citizenship is the issue if you're claiming the mother wasn't in Canada long enough to have acquired citizenship. They went there at the same time in 1967 and came back to the US in 1975. If the father became a Canadian citizen then the mother could have become one by 1974. The point is if Ted Cruz didn't know he was a Canadian citizen himself as a grown man, with a law degree, running for the US Senate with his eye on the White House, then it's highly unlikely he knows any more about the citizenship and voting of his mother when he was 4. And if he's lying about knowing his own citizenship, then it's quite obvious he would like about his parents citizenship.

Birthers Beware: Why Court Challenges To Ted Cruz’s Citizenship Can’t Win

By TAMARA TABO36 Comments
/ at 10:06 AM

For several weeks now, GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump has stoked concerns about whether his opponent Ted Cruz, born in Canada to an American mother, could meet the constitutional requirement that the President of the United States be a “natural born Citizen.”

Last Friday, an octogenarian Houston attorney named Newton B. Schwartz Sr. filed a motion for declaratory judgment in U.S. district court, asking for a legal determination of Cruz’s eligibility.

But no matter what Article II, Section I, Clause 5 means, or what motivates “Cruz birthers,” court challenges to Cruz’s qualification for President are doomed to fail.

They can’t win in federal court because they shouldn’t even be heard in federal court.

Courts Love Answering Your Questions. Just Ask!
Beneath Donald Trump’s bluster and sensationalism is a shrewd guy who knows how to work a room.

Just not a courtroom.

On January 7, Trump had offered Cruz “free legal advice” via Twitter:

.@SenTedCruz Ted–free legal advice on how to pre-empt the Dems on citizen issue. Go to court now & seek Declaratory Judgment–you will win!

When CNN’s Wolf Blitzer interviewed Trump earlier this month, Trump told him, “I’d go and seek a declaratory judgment if I was Ted.”

Questioned further, Trump explained (trumpsplained?):

“You go to federal court to ask for a — what’s called a declaratory judgment. You go in seeking the decision of the court, without a court case.
You go right in. You go before a judge. You do it quickly. It can go quickly. Declaratory judgment, it’s very good. I’ve used it on numerous occasions. I’ve been pretty good with it, actually.
[ . . . ]
So, what you do is you go in immediately, like tomorrow, this afternoon. You go to federal court, you ask for a declaratory judgment. That’s — you want the court to rule. And then once the court rules, you have your decision.”

Is Trump talking about a declaratory judgment in federal court or a quickie wedding ceremony from a county justice of the peace?

According to Trump’s breezy description of court procedure, declaratory judgments are not only conveniently available during your lunch break, but you can also get one “without a court case.”

What Trump describes, however, actually sounds a whole lot more like an advisory opinion than a declaratory judgment.

That makes his advice to Cruz considerably less awesome.

Federal-court advisory opinions are, of course, unconstitutional. They violate the “case or controversy” requirement of Article III, Section II of the U.S. Constitution.

Advisory opinions announce the court’s view on legal issues, but there is no underlying lawsuit or justiciable case, only hypothetical or abstract guidance.

In a declaratory judgment, on the other hand, the court provides a statement of the legal rights or duties between actual adversarial parties in a legal dispute.

It’s true that folks who anticipate that another party will soon file suit against them often file for declaratory relief in order to forestall the future litigation.

Nevertheless, Article III’s case or controversy requirements apply to declaratory judgments, as they do to all other cases that may be heard by federal courts. This means that, along with satisfying factors like ripeness, mootness, standing, etc., declaratory actions need to have actual legally adverse parties.

So, it’s not altogether clear whether Cruz could have followed Trump’s legal advice, even if Cruz wanted to.

Who did Donald Trump think Ted Cruz should have named as defendant in the declaratory action Trump kept urging Cruz to file? Who was the adverse party?

When Trump began suggesting that Cruz seek a declaratory judgment, there may have been debate wafting around regarding his eligibility, but wafting debate does not an Article III case or controversy make.

The Curious Stylings of Newton B. Schwartz Sr.


Ted Cruz (Photo by Steve Pope/Getty)

Late last week, Newton B. Schwartz Sr., a lawyer who recently faced some legal problems of his own, filed a complaint in federal court, calling for declaratory judgment, naming Cruz as the sole defendant, alleging that Cruz failed to meet the natural born citizen requirement.

The Schwartz complaint reads like a poorly plagiarized undergraduate paper. One need not be a snoot to see that Schwartz’s prose would benefit from a heap of well-placed commas.

But so what if Newton Schwartz couldn’t punctuate his way out of a brown paper bag? How solid is he on the law?

Not very.

Standing: When Caring Is Not Enough

The 28-page complaint would be much shorter if not for pages of semi-coherent digressions ranting about Cruz’s politics, the “lady Texas lawyers and judges” involved in the Fifth Circuit’s recent abortion cases, and Tea Party conspiracies.

It’s a weird read, and Schwartz is no fan of conservatives.

Ironically, Schwartz’s complaint fails for the same reason so many similar legal challenges from conservative anti-Obama Birthers like Orly Taitz failed. Schwartz lacks standing to sue.

In order for a plaintiff to have standing, the plaintiff must have suffered injury-in-fact. The plaintiff’s harm must be concrete and particular, not a mere generalized grievance.

Without a specific statutory right of action, simply being a concerned voter like Schwartz is not enough of an individual harm to support standing.

On the other hand, in Barnett v. Obama, the Ninth Circuit held that the plaintiffs who were Barack Obama’s rival Presidential candidates lacked standing to challenge his eligibility, not because their grievance was too general, but because they no longer had an interest in fair competition by the time they filed suit. By then, Obama had already been sworn in as President.

So, while ordinary voters like Schwartz don’t have standing, Donald Trump might.

If The Personal Is Political, Then The Court Won’t Answer Your Personal Question

Even if the court found that a plaintiff — Trump or whomever — had standing, the political question doctrine would likely keep the court from hearing the case.

The doctrine divests federal courts of authority over matters that pose political questions.

According to the U.S. Supreme Court in Baker v. Carr, among the characteristics of a political question are a “textually demonstrable constitutional commitment of the issue to a coordinate political department” and the “impossibility for a court’s independent resolution without expressing a lack of respect for a coordinate branch of government.”

Deciding whether Cruz’s circumstances disqualify him from serving as President probably counts.

In 2008, critics questioned whether Senator John McCain counted as a “natural born citizen,” since he was born in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936.

In Robinson v. Bowen, a court held that plaintiffs challenging McCain’s qualifications lacked standing, but also that the case presented a non-justiciable political question.

The Constitution and federal law establish a system for determining who’s eligible to be President. The system involves state legislatures, electors, and ultimately Congress.

Article II, Section 1 and the Twelfth Amendment lay out the Electoral College system. The Twentieth Amendment gives Congress the job of handling the disqualification of a President elect. Title 3, Section 15 of the U.S. Code provides Congress a specific procedure for calling for and handling objections that may arise after the President of the Senate announces the winner of the electoral vote count.

If the judicial branch were to inject itself into the fray, it would be reaching beyond its proper role.

Any legal resolution to the question of Ted Cruz’s citizenship must involve a justiciable case — no advisory opinions, no generalized grievances, no political questions. Unless Donald Trump or other Cruz critics can overcome that burden, they simply can’t win. In fact, they can’t even be heard.

http://abovethelaw.com/2016/01/birth...ship-cant-win/

---

Tamara Tabo is a summa cum laude graduate of the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University, where she served as Editor-in-Chief of the school’s law review. After graduation, she clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and ran the Center for Legal Pedagogy at Texas Southern University, an institute applying cognitive science to improvements in legal education. You can reach her at tabo.atl@gmail.com.