DOCUMENTS OBSCURED; FOREIGN-CITIZEN FATHERS; REPORTED DUAL CITIZENSHIP
by Sharon Rondeau
(Feb. 18, 2016) — On March 23, 2015, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz declared his candidacy for the presidency on Twitter and later, at Liberty University, a well-known Christian college in Lynchburg, VA.
During his announcement speech, Cruz invoked his “personal history,” which includes travel among Canada, the U.S., Cuba, and Africa, to say, “These are who we are as Americans. And yet for so many Americans, the promise of America seems more and more distant,” Cruz said.
Liberty University President and Chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr. introduced Cruz, praising him for “standing on principle” and “taking the road less traveled” in a reference to Cruz’s apparent opposition to the Washington establishment since his election to the U.S. Senate in 2012.
At 14:25 in the 76-minute C-Span video of his announcement, Cruz said that he carried over $100,000 in student loans which he “just paid off a few years ago.”
Barack Hussein Obama has also frequently attempted to define “who we are as Americans” and claimed that his student loans totaling $120,000 were not fully paid “until his election to the Senate in 2004.”
Cruz was born in Canada to a Cuban-citizen father who reportedly became a Canadian in 1973 after completing the five-year residency requirement. The elder Cruz then reportedly abandoned his wife and very young son and flew to Houston, TX.
According to Ted Cruz, his father became a born-again Christian and returned to Canada to reunite with his family and eventually bring them to Houston. However, the Canadian publication Macleans reported in January that “it fell to [former employee] Gaede to drive Eleanor, the nearly four-year-old boy and their luggage to the Calgary airport” to depart for Texas.
Cruz recounted that his father had sought haven in the U.S. in 1957 from the turmoil in Cuba prior to the Revolution, denouncing U.S.-backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista.
Obama’s father was reportedly a socialist who came to the U.S. on a student visa. Cruz’s father supported a communist, Fidel Castro, who ousted Batista and ushered in what has now been more than five decades of the imprisonment of political objectors, forced indoctrination of schoolchildren, and a strident anti-U.S. propaganda campaign.
Last year, without consulting Congress, Obama lifted a travel embargo with Cuba and will reportedly visit the communist island himself next month.
Thus far, the American people do not know if Ted Cruz or Barack Obama possesses U.S. citizenship, as it appears that neither man has ever been required to prove it.
In November, as controversy arose over the acceptance of tens of thousands of unvetted Syrian refugees whose numbers could contain terrorists, Obama said that the U.S. cannot reject them because “it’s not who we are.”
Many believe we do not know who Obama is.
In regard to the issue of Syrian refugees, exactly two years ago, Cruz said in a Fox News interview that the U.S. “has welcomed refugees – the tired, huddled masses – for centuries. That’s been the history of the United States; we should continue to do so.” (starts at 1:00). “We have to continue to be vigilant to make sure those coming are not affiliated with the terrorists, but we can do that,” Cruz added.
Cruz appears to have changed his position on accepting Syrian refugees, as last November he introduced legislation intended to “immediately bar refugees to the United States from any country, such as Iraq or Syria, that contains territory substantially controlled by a foreign terrorist organization,” according to Cruz’s Senate website.
“As the American people are now painfully aware, ISIS has emerged as the new face of the radical terror that has bedeviled the West in recent decades. Unlike some regional jihadists, ISIS represents a direct and growing threat to our citizens, and increasingly to our homeland itself. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration has clearly lacked focus on national security interests. I believe we must do everything we can to prevent even a very few jihadis from slipping into our nation and urge my colleagues to join me in this effort to protect the American people,” Cruz said on November 18, 2015.
On November 18, Cruz offered Obama the opportunity to debate him on the U.S.’s policy toward Syrian refugees, having stated that “It is the height of lunacy for a government official to welcome in tens of thousands of refugees when we know that among them will be ISIS terrorists.”
In 2010, Obama had promised that “If you like your plan; you can keep your plan” relative to his health care proposal, which passed the Democrat-controlled Congress without any Republican votes. Upon inception of “Obamacare,” millions of Americans lost medical plans that met their needs, only to find that the premiums for replacement plans were substantially more costly.
Both presidential candidates Marco Rubio and Donald Trump claim that Cruz is “a liar.”
Cruz has ridiculed Trump’s threat of a lawsuit over an advertisement now airing in South Carolina prior to Saturday’s Republican primary which depicts Trump telling the late Tim Russert that he was “pro-choice.” Cruz stated that he will not remove the ad and instead “will now begin airing it more frequently.”
“One of the things I look forward to most of all is deposing Donald Trump. For that particular endeavor, I may well not use outside counsel — I may take the deposition myself. And I will say this, whether in a deposition or a court of law, getting Donald Trump under oath, under penalty of perjury, answering these questions — well, I’ll point out it didn’t work out so well for Bill Clinton,” Cruz said, referring to Clinton’s impeachment by the House of Representatives in December 1998 for lying to a grand jury.
The Cruz campaign’s ad features Trump’s “pro-choice” statement to Russert but does not show that Trump also said at the same time, “I hate the concept of abortion. I hate everything it stands for.”
Trump has said that he has “evolved” on the abortion issue and is now pro-life, although some doubt his sincerity.
Earlier this week, Trump announced that he is considering filing a lawsuit challenging Cruz’s constitutional eligibility to serve as president should Cruz not retract “lies” Trump claims Cruz has made on Trump’s position on Obamacare.
Trump maintains that Cruz’s birth in Canada disqualifies him from serving given the “natural born Citizen” clause in Article II, Section 1, clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution. Trump has stated in the past that he had always been taught that the president and commander-in-chief must be born in the United States.
Cruz has rejoined Trump’s eligibility lawsuit threat by stating that he is “prepared,” calling the hypothetical litigation “frivolous.”
In 2011, as Trump considered running for the presidency against Obama in 2012, he demanded that Obama release his “long-form” birth certificate to prove, with additional details over the “short-form” Certification of Life Birth released on the Internet by unknown parties in June 2008, that Obama was born in Hawaii as he claims.
Within the same time frame, Trump released his short-form, then “long-form” birth certificates indicating that he was born in New York City on June 14, 1946. Both of his parents were U.S. citizens at the time, with his mother having naturalized in 1942.
Cruz’s father did not become a U.S. citizen until 2005 after becoming a Canadian in 1973.
Obama, who has faced more than 100 lawsuits and ballot challenges claiming that he is not constitutionally eligible to serve as president resulting from his foreign-citizen father and questionable birthplace, claimed eligibility under the 14th Amendment and a birth in Hawaii on his 2008 campaign website, “FighttheSmears.”
In response to Trump’s strident demands, on April 27, 2011, the White House released what it said was a scan of a certified copy of Obama’s long-form birth certificate from the Hawaii Department of Health. However, almost immediately, computer experts and graphics professionals declared the image a poor forgery.
Obama has failed to release any other documentation about himself, including passport and college applications, college theses, medical history, and educational records.
In September 2011, the Maricopa County Cold Case Posse launched an investigation into the long-form birth certificate image, announcing on March 1, 2012 that it is a “computer-generated forgery.”
In late October 2012, Trump publicly challenged Obama to release his college and passport application forms in exchange for $5 million to go to the charity of Obama’s choice. Several days later, Trump increased his offer tenfold to $50 million, with no response from the White House.
Despite historical texts and U.S. Supreme Court rulings invoking the parents’ citizenship as a factor in determining whether or not a child is “natural born,” both Obama and Cruz have claimed to be “natural born Citizens.”
Following Cruz’s announcement that he would seek the presidency, The Post & Email sought documents through FOIA requests and to the government of Alberta, Canada for Cruz’s birth certificate. Cruz reportedly released his birth certificate to The Dallas Morning News in August 2013 showing that he was born in Calgary, Alberta on December 22, 1970 to a father from Cuba and a mother born in Wilmington, DE.
In late January, The Post & Email obtained a certified copy of Eleanor Darragh Cruz’s birth certificate showing that she was born on November 23, 1934 in Wilmington. The Cruz campaign has denied that she ever became a Canadian citizen, although Breitbart reported that both of Cruz’s parents’ names appeared on an unofficial Canadian voter roll from 1974.
At a townhall meeting in New Hampshire last October, Cruz himself stated that his mother “has been an American citizen her whole life.”
After the August 18, 2013 publication of The Dallas Morning News article, Cruz’s spokeswoman, Catherine Frazier, stated that to the best of their knowledge, Cruz never possessed Canadian citizenship. Cruz’s office has failed to respond to inquiries from The Post & Email on Cruz’s background, as has the current White House on Obama’s history.
Last month, a writer for The Examiner found that Canadian law in effect at the time of Cruz’s birth did not recognize dual citizenship, although it is possible that Cruz was registered as a U.S. citizen at his birth or shortly thereafter. The Dallas Morning News reported that Cruz was born with dual citizenship, although thus far, Cruz has not released anything to prove the report accurate.
In 2008, Barack Obama claimed having been born with dual U.S.-Kenyan citizenship and that his Kenyan citizenship expired upon his 23rd birthday by virtue of his choice not to assert it. In 1961, Kenya was a British protectorate; therefore, all Kenyans were actually British citizens until Kenya’s independence was declared in December 1963.
If accurate, Obama was granted “Kenyan” citizenship because of his father’s citizenship, which would support the contention that a father’s citizenship carries over to his child by tradition on the part of most nations.
In April of last year, The Post & Email wrote to the Cruz presidential campaign directly by certified mail requesting Cruz’s authorization for us to obtain government documents which would reveal more about his background. We received back the green card acknowledging the letter but nothing further. Alternative to his written consent, The Post & Email asked that Cruz release the documentation himself.
The Post & Email had submitted FOIA requests seeking a Consular Record of Birth Abroad (CRBA) from the U.S. State Department, if it exists; naturalization documents from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), if they exists; and a Selective Service registration form from the Selective Service System (SSS), which was released along with a statement that Cruz registered with the Selective Service through his application for federal student aid.
Just before announcing his candidacy, Trump said that people who reportedly attended school with Obama “don’t know who he is.” “Nobody knew who…he was. He’s now our president.”
Contradicting Obama’s claim of a birth at Kapiolani Gynecological & Maternity Hospital in Honolulu, Trump told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, “His mother was not in the hospital; there were many other things that came out, and frankly, if you would report it accurately, I think you’d probably get better ratings than you’re getting, which are pretty small,” Trump told Blitzer (begins at 2:45).
In a representation of what he claimed were “some of the more extreme” “birther theories” about the meaning of the “natural born Citizen” clause during a January Republican debate, Cruz stated that neither he, Rubio, Bobby Jindal nor Trump would qualify because their parents were not born in the U.S. Using Trump’s mother, who immigrated from Scotland, as an example, Cruz said, “She was naturalized…on the issue of citizenship, Donald, I’m not going to use your mother’s birth against you. You’re an American, as is everybody else on this stage…”
“Birthers” who have questioned the eligibility of Obama, Cruz, Jindal, Rubio, McCain and others have maintained that a “natural born Citizen” can be born to foreign-born parents as long as they were naturalized as American citizens before the birth of the child on U.S. soil.
Trump interjected, “But I was born here; big difference.” Cruz then inaccurately claimed that Trump’s lawyers had said that the issue of Cruz’s eligibility was settled, which Trump did not say. “There’s a big question mark on your head,” Trump told Cruz, “and you can’t do that to the party…You have to have certainty…You have great constitutional lawyers who say you can’t run…I’m not bringing a suit; I promise, but the Democrats are going to bring a lawsuit,” Trump said.
Cruz is relying on “longstanding U.S. law” passed in 1790 by the first Congress but repealed in 1795 and to which two former solicitors general referred in their essay published days before Cruz’s presidential declaration in the Harvard Law Review.
Cruz’s father, Rafael Bienvenido Cruz, also relied on the Naturalization Act of 1790 during an interview with “Freedom Friday” host Carl Gallups on January 22, 2016 to justify his son’s eligibility.
Cruz has called the questions over his eligibility “silliness,” as Obama did on the day his long-form birth certificate was released.
After Cruz reportedly won the Iowa caucuses, he admitted that his staffers had inaccurately circulated an email contending that Dr. Ben Carson was suspending his campaign. Cruz and his supporters have held CNN responsible for the mistaken information. In the February 6 debate, Cruz again apologized to Carson and said of a correction he alleged CNN made later that evening, “I wish that our campaign staff had forwarded that statement. They were unaware of it.”
How could his staffers have forwarded a “corrected” statement of which they were unaware? CNN has contradicted Cruz’s depiction of events in its own reportage of what it said of Carson on the night of the Iowa caucuses, including that on February 3, Cruz said that “CNN got it right.”
On February 2, Cruz explained that “Last night when our political team saw the CNN post saying Dr. Carson was not carrying on to New Hampshire and South Carolina, our campaign updated the grassroots leaders just as we would with any breaking news story. That’s fair game. What the team should have done is send around the follow-up statement from the Carson campaign clarifying that he was indeed staying in the race when that came out. That was a mistake from our end, and for that I apologize to Dr. Carson.”
Contrary to CNN’s reportage of Carson’s plans after Iowa, Carson went to New Hampshire and is now in South Carolina campaigning, stating that he will continue on to the Nevada caucuses regardless of the results in South Carolina on Saturday.
In an article titled “IS TED CRUZ THE ‘NORTH AMERICAN UNION’ CANDIDATE?” published on Wednesday at NewsWithViews, Marilyn Barnewall wrote:
The word “TrusTED” decorates the campaign bus in which Senator Ted Cruz travels America to spread the message of why he should be President of the United States. It’s clever.
It’s okay to trust someone provided you know what is in the package that comes with him and approve of both… the candidate and the baggage on the bus.
Before you trust Ted Cruz with the fate of your nation, there are some things you need to know. They aren’t the obvious things about which I’ve already written… the fact that Cruz is not a natural-born American because his father was a Cuban citizen at the time of Ted’s birth, for example.
I’ve also written about Heidi Cruz’s affiliation with Goldman Sachs… that she’s on the Executive Committee of that organization, not just a mere employee.
For those who at one time were worried about the North American Union – the joining of Mexico, the United States and Canada into a single nation – Heidi Cruz is listed as a Task Force member by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in its Task Force Report on the Building a North American Community Committee. Mrs. Cruz totally approves of the recommendations contained in the report: Make the three nations into a single entity, same as the European Union?
When you think about it for a minute, how neat would it be for the planned North American Union to have Ted Cruz as President? Joint citizenship in the U.S. and a Canadian citizen — who is Hispanic and can speak Spanish?
During his announcement speech, Cruz revealed that his wife, Heidi, had “lived in Africa, in Kenya and Nigeria” as the daughter of missionaries (10:52).
Falwell recently personally endorsed Trump for president.
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This post was updated on Feb. 19, 2016 at 9:19 a.m. EST.