BUT DID ONLY ONE PARENT BECOME A CITIZEN?
by Sharon Rondeau
(Apr. 23, 2016) — An article in the Jamaica Observer dated November 1, 2015 reports that Rafael Bienvenido Cruz and Eleanor Darragh Wilson were married in Canada, to which circumstantial evidence has pointed as details about their son, presidential candidate Ted Cruz, have slowly emerged over the last several months.
The paper reported that Cruz is the “son of a political prisoner of Cuba’s dictator Fulgencio Batista, who migrated to the US as a permanent resident and married an American citizen while living in Canada.”
Marriage, birth, death and naturalization records are not divulged to the public by Canadian authorities without a signed privacy waiver.
It appears that the elder Cruz and Wilson met in Louisiana, where Cruz’s first wife, Julia Garza, had filed for separation and divorce between 1967 and 1968.
As The Post & Email reported on Thursday, Garza’s petition for a legal separation was published in the New Orleans Times-Picayune on July 1, 1967 and the divorce announced on September 24, 1968.
In January, Breitbart News quoted the Ted Cruz campaign as having told them that Cruz’s parents left for Canada in December 1967. Documents appearing to be from the Harris County, TX court detailing their 1996-1997 divorce state that the couple was married on March 14, 1969 without identifying the location.
On August 18, 2013, The Dallas Morning News published Ted Cruz’s birth certificate indicating that he was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada on December 22, 1970. The News reported that Cruz was born with dual US-Canadian citizenship. At the time, however, Canadian law did not encompass dual citizenship to the best of this publication’s knowledge.
The original title of the article appears to reference only Cruz’s Canadian citizenship.
Cruz has been unwilling to reveal documentation, if it exists, that he was registered as a U.S. citizen born abroad. Various U.S. federal agencies have denied FOIA requesters access to any documents which they might hold on Cruz; the Canadian government has similar policies.
Despite his birth in a foreign country, Cruz insists that he is a “natural born Citizen,” as required by Article II, Section 1, clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution for the presidency.
The Observer focused on Cruz’s lasting friendship with former Princeton roommate and native Jamaican David Panton, speculating that if Cruz should win the presidency, “Jamaica could well get a real friend in the White House.”
Of his platform, the Observer reported:
* Repeal Obamacare at all cost.
* No compromise on immigration, he is for pro-immigration leading to the path for citizenship
* Wants to amend constitution so that voters can oust Supreme Court justices
* Amend constitution to allow states to ban gay marriage
* Abolish IRS, switch to a flat tax
After become a Rhodes scholar following Princeton and Harvard Law School, Panton returned to Jamaica and was active in politics for a time amid speculation that he was destined for “leadership in the country.” “His brilliance now reminds many of us of Senator Barack Obama,” wrote columnist Tony Miles.
Panton was reportedly 16 years old when he entered Princeton, and Cruz was 17. Cruz recruited Panton to the Debate Team, and eventually both competed internationally while attending Harvard Law School.
According to The New York Times, Cruz attended Panton’s wedding and became his first child’s godfather. Cruz and Panton additionally entered into a business relationship, launching “a fund that was created to draw investments for Caribbean ventures.”
It is believed that the “natural born Citizen” clause was intended to prevent foreign influence from entering the office of the president and commander-in-chief of the US military.
In April of last year, The New York Times quoted Cruz as having said, “I am Cuban.” However, on his campaign website, Cruz states, on a page dedicated to putting to rest questions about his constitutional eligibility, “U.S. law has been clear from the very first days of this country that the child of a U.S. citizen born abroad is a natural born citizen…As to Senator Cruz, his mother, Eleanor Darragh was born in Wilmington, Delaware. She is a citizen by birth, so Ted became an American citizen by virtue of being born to her.”
Cruz does not clarify that the law to which he refers, the 1790 Naturalization Act, was repealed five years later.
While in Canada, Rafael B. Cruz became a Canadian citizen. There is speculation, but no proof, that Eleanor also assumed Canadian citizenship while residing in Alberta. In a 2013 interview, Rafael told NPR that he spent eight years in Canada.
The Times quoted a debater who had witnessed Ted Cruz’s style as having said of Cruz, “In any debate round, he would act like what he was telling you was something he believed to his core…Opponents had the impression ‘he would say just about anything, whatever would win the debate.’”
A “Natural Born citizen is one born IN the United States to Parents who are both U.S. Citizens themselves”-Minor v Happersett, U.S. Supreme Court, (1875). Reaffirmed in Shanks v Dupont, Wong Kim Ark, The Venus and undisturbed in Laity v NY,(2012)
A quick calculation of Padre Cruz’s Canadian naturalization gives us a clue to underlying hidden facts. He should have needed to wait six years to get his citizens ship and got it in just over 3. The only exception is marriage or “shacking up” with a Canadian citizen outside Canada. Credit is then given for those years. If Mama Cruz were Canadian the law in that in country then would have required a renunciation of US citizenship so that Cruz when born would have had ONLY Canadian citizenship. His assertion of the 1790 Naturalization Act was invalid before 1800. However, we know that Cruz has now renounced his Canadian citizenship. So if he is NOT Canadian and NOT a US citizen what does that make him? “LYIN’TED” is not a legal term but perhaps a place to start.
from the point of view of the u.s., any dual citizenship that ted cruz might enjoy, is by law, conditioned upon his birth being documented by the filing of a consular report of birth abroad. it is not enough to just have a u.s. citizen as one of your parents if you were born abroad. if the crba was obtained in canada, then felito crossed over the border as a documented u.s. citizen of some sort.
even for felito to have had his own passport as a child or be placed on eleanor’s passport (similar to her brit born child, michael wilson, whose name appeared on her passport according to the london consular death report) so that he could come as go with her as u.s. citizen, that would still have been conditioned upon the filing of a crba.
if a crba was not filed until ted needed a passport to travel to britain associated with a high school trip, then that means he came into the country (possibly as an undocumented alien) or as a canadian.
i currently have a foia request (which has not been rejected and which has been assigned a case number) seeking documentation on that matter.
even if ted does not get the nomination this time around, and the natural born issue is not resolved this time around, he will be back again in the 2020 cycle. so, even if documents are not obtained in time to prove one way or the other what his citizenship status is, my bet is that any foia requests that are delayed this cycle will come out with documents sufficient enough to have his particular issue decided.
if it were damning enough to cause ted to not seek the nomination again, all that means is there is not pressure on the supreme court to decide the natural born citizenship matter as this time which would be unfortunate.
this is a serious enough matter to be resolved and with the browning of the u.s. population, this will be an issue which will come up again and again, which is why it deserves its day in the high court. this is not a political issue, it is a legal issue.
this is constitutional and the congress can not, imo, pass a law which in essence would amend the constitution. amending the constitution would require a constitutional amendment.
when the senate, i believe, passed a bill affirming that john mccain was a natural born citizen by virtue of being born in panama(a u.s. territory at the time) and while his parents were deployed in service to our country) this wasn’t a law which changed the constitution, it was really nothing more that a “sense of the senate”. it neither changed nor amended the constitution.
He wants to erase US sovereignty.