Wall Street Journal
By Colleen McCain Nelson and Paul Vieira
August 19, 2013
Sen. Ted Cruz has released his birth certificate confirming that he is a U.S. citizen who was born in Canada, trying to get ahead of a possible distraction should he seek to run for the presidency.
The first-term Republican senator’s recent travel to Iowa has stoked speculation that he’s eyeing the White House, but it’s also rekindled debate about whether Mr. Cruz is eligible to run for president – an office that would require him to be a “natural born” American citizen. Most legal experts say that standard includes both Americans born in the U.S. and people born outside the U.S. to at least one American parent.
The Texas senator shared his birth certificate for the first time with The Dallas Morning News. The document shows that Mr. Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta, to an American mother and Cuban father.
The Morning News also raised the possibility that Mr. Cruz is a Canadian citizen because he was born on Canadian soil, making him a dual citizen of the U.S. and Canada. It cited Canadian immigration lawyers.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Guidy Mamann, a Toronto lawyer who specializes in immigration, said people born in Canada automatically become citizens of the country under Canadian law even if they take no action to claim citizenship – and the only exception to the rule pertains to children of foreign diplomats born in the country.
Mr. Mamann added Canadians can renounce their citizenship in Canada at any time – which former newspaper baron Conrad Black did in 2001 in order to sit as a member of Britain’s House of Lords.
Sen. Cruz’s office questioned suggestions that he’s a Canadian citizen.
“Senator Cruz became a U.S. citizen at birth, and he never had to go through a naturalization process after birth to become a U.S. citizen,” spokeswoman Catherine Frazier told the paper. “To our knowledge, he never had Canadian citizenship, so there is nothing to renounce.”
Although Mr. Cruz has spent less than a year in the U.S. Senate, he’s already emerged as a tea party favorite and possible presidential contender, drawing attention for his aggressive efforts to defund President Barack Obama’s health-care law.
The simmering controversy about Mr. Cruz’s birth certificate is only the latest kerfuffle about a potential candidate’s citizenship. Mr. Obama faced persistent attacks from groups arguing that he was not born in the U.S. He later released his long-form birth certificate showing he was born in Hawaii. Mr. Obama’s mother was an American citizen.
If he runs, Mr. Cruz would not be the first presidential candidate born outside the U.S. For instance, Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.), who won the Republican nomination in 2008, faced a smattering of questions about the fact that he was born at a naval air station in the Panama Canal Zone. And George Romney, who sought the GOP nomination in 1968, was born in Mexico to American parents.
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