Is the Truth Coming Out About Ted Cruz’s Citizenship?

“A NATURALIZED CITIZEN CANNOT SERVE”

by Sharon Rondeau

(May 1, 2016) — As reported by The Washington Examiner on Saturday and “Fox & Friends” on Sunday morning (8:11 a.m. EDT), presidential candidate Ted Cruz’s wife Heidi characterized her husband as “an immigrant” while campaigning in Indiana.

Heidi Cruz was speaking on Saturday to a group of rally attendees when she made the remark in an apparent attempt to convince the audience that her husband could “unify this party.”

She said that her husband “has been winning the millennial vote in state after state.  He’s been winning the women’s vote in state after state,” although he is trailing Republican front-runner Donald Trump by a margin large enough to render it impossible for him to garner the 1,237 delegates purportedly needed to receive the Republican nomination.

Whether the area in which the Cruzes were campaigning has a high number of immigrants is unclear.

Article II, Section 1, clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution requires the president and commander-in-chief to be a “natural born Citizen,” a term not precisely defined by the Framers in 1787.  Throughout history, however, most Americans have understood the term to mean that one must be born in the United States to be eligible to run for president.

An editorial published in the Harvard Law Review Forum 12 days before Cruz announced his candidacy last year attempts to make the case that Cruz, although born “across the border” in Canada to a Cuban father and American mother, qualifies as a “natural born Citizen” because of his birth to one U.S.-citizen parent. In the concluding paragraph of their essay, authors and former solicitors general Neal Katyal and Paul Clement concede that “…for better or worse, a naturalized citizen cannot serve.”

“Immigrants” who arrive in the United States from other countries must go through a process established by Congress as one of its duties under the Constitution which can lead to “naturalization.”

Rafael Bienvenido Cruz was born in Matanzas, Cuba and immigrated to the United States in 1957, where he attended the University of Texas and participated in pro-Castro demonstrations.  After graduation, he moved to Louisiana and married his first wife, Julia Ann Garza, also a Cuban immigrant. Following the birth of two daughters, the couple separated in 1967.

In Louisiana, Rafael met Eleanor Darragh Wilson, who had lived overseas with her first husband, Alan Wilson, for a number of years, and the new couple left their employment in Louisiana, resettling in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Their son Ted was born in Calgary on December 22, 1970 and has a Canadian birth certificate.

According to Ted Cruz’s public life narrative, his father abandoned the family in late 1974, when he was four years old, for Houston, Texas. Reportedly, Ted and his mother remained in Calgary for several more months before the family reunited in Houston. Ted’s parents appear to have lived together until 1993. According to court papers obtained by The Post & Email from the Harris County, TX court communications director on Friday, their divorce was initiated in July 1996 and finalized in February 1997.

The documents state that the couple was married on March 14, 1969, not quite six months after Cruz’s divorce from Garza was finalized, as The Post & Email exclusively reported.

In reporting on Heidi Cruz’s statement, Fox & Friends’s Anna Kooiman did not invoke  the “natural born Citizen” term to provide context for Heidi Cruz’s words, but rather stated that an unspecified number of judges have deemed Cruz eligible for their respective state primary ballots.  Cruz has been challenged by lawsuits initiated in Utah, Texas and New York as well as in multiple ballot challenges filed respectively in the states of New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Florida, and New Jersey.

The Utah case, filed by a retired attorney, is now at the U.S. Supreme Court.

In New Jersey on April 11, Administrative Law Judge Jeff Masin heard oral argument from Republican presidential write-in candidate and law professor Victor Williams, who represented himself, and Atty. Mario Apuzzo, who represented three New Jersey registered voters concerned that Cruz is not a “natural born Citizen.”

In an exclusive interview on Friday, Apuzzo told The Post & Email that in studying the 1790 Naturalization Act, upon which Cruz bases his eligibility although repealed, “The First Congress – this is George Washington and many Framers – didn’t distinguish as to whether the children were born in or out of the country.  That’s very important to understand. If you’re born in the country and your parents are aliens, the Congress is saying the children are aliens.  They will become citizens when their parents naturalize if it’s done during their minority.”

The Washington Examiner reported that in response to Heidi Cruz’s comment, Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier attempted to clarify by stating that Heidi was “referring to Ted as being the son of an immigrant.”

By the strictest definition of “natural born Citizen” by which both the father and mother must be U.S. citizens at the time of the child’s birth, the “son of an immigrant” would still render Cruz ineligible since his father did not become a US citizen until 2005, when Ted was 35 years old.

Thus far, Ted Cruz has ignored requests to show documentation connecting him to U.S. citizenship in any way.  Some have speculated that Ted Cruz’s parents never filed to acquire documentation showing that their son was registered as a U.S. citizen at birth or afterward which may not have been mandatory but helpful in showing his claimed dual citizenship at birth.

On May 14, 2014, Cruz renounced his Canadian citizenship reported by The Dallas Morning News on August 18, 2013, a fact which Kooiman reported without delving into his eligibility further.

On April 11, 2016, NBC News reported that Ted Cruz “became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2014.”  The outlet did not respond to The Post & Email’s request to reach veteran reporter Pete Williams, author of the article.

Some speculate that Cruz never possessed documentation of U.S. citizenship and  obtained “amnesty” in 1986 after President Ronald Reagan signed the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act which permitted as many as three million illegal aliens to remain in the country. Following its publication of Cruz’ss Canadian birth certificate in August 2013, Frazier told The Dallas Morning News that Cruz had flown on a U.S. passport to Europe for a high school trip in 1986.

On April 11, Apuzzo argued that Cruz should be compelled to provide proof that his mother was a U.S. citizen when he was born. The following day, Masin issued an opinion which to some appears to have been pre-written, as it fails to address any of the points raised in either Apuzzo’s or Williams’s submitted briefs.

Apuzzo now represents Williams in his appeal to the Appellate Division of the New Jersey Superior Court.

The comment is reminiscent of one made by former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson of Barack Hussein Obama in 2008 when he sought the presidency.  “He’s an immigrant,” Richardson said of Obama, despite the “natural born Citizen” requirement.  Obama claims to have been born in Hawaii to a U.S.-citizen mother and British-citizen father, but his “long-form” birth certificate, posted on the White House website on April 27, 2011, has been declared by a criminal investigative team to be a “computer-generated forgery,” along with his Selective Service registration form.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) has not addressed the questions over Cruz’s eligibility.  A lawsuit has been promised in Arizona, where on Saturday Trump supporters claimed that delegates pledged to the billionaire businessman were changed to support Cruz at the Republican state convention.

Neither Frazier nor the Cruz campaign has responded to The Post & Email’s questions about Cruz’s citizenship status or Rafael’s background and alleged ordination as a pastor.

Heidi Cruz spent part of her childhood in Kenya and Nigeria, as stated by her husband when he declared his presidential candidacy at Liberty University last year.  Both she and her husband worked within the George W. Bush administration.  Heidi was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) between 2005 and 2011.

The “natural born Citizen” clause is believed to have been included in the Constitution to preclude “foreign influence” from entering the office of the president and commander-in-chief.

Update, 3:30 p.m. EDT:  Trump was a guest on Fox & Friends on Sunday following Koiman’s reportage of Heidi Cruz’s identification of her husband as “an immigrant” and provided a response, h/t BirtherReport.com. “Did she get that from you?” Koiman asked Trump.

“I assume he’s an immigrant from Canada, because, you know, he lived in Canada for the first four years of his life,” Trump began.

He predicted that Cruz “is not going to get it,” meaning the Republican nomination, but added, “If he does, the Democrats will bring a lawsuit…that he is not a naturalized [sic] citizen.”