Is Ted Cruz eligible to be President?
(originally posted 12.01.2016 on Google+)

(Short answer: Yes, as long as no court objects)

Donald Trump did it again. Again he tries to abuse the American Constitution for his populistic games. I already covered his misrepresentations of the 14th amendment[1].

And now it is about Article II of the Constitution and the question whether Ted Cruz is eligible to be president. The constitution states that the President must be a “natural born Citizen”. But how is “natural born” defined?

I’m not a lawyer, but I know where to look first to answer such questions. As always, if you want to know how citizenship-by-birth law is currently interpreted, you have to look in the State Department’s FAM (“Foreign Affairs Manual”) documents[2]. Here you go:

7 FAM 1131.6-2 Eligibility for Presidency

a. It has never been determined definitively by a court whether a person who acquired U.S. citizenship by birth abroad to U.S. citizens is a natural-born citizen within the meaning of Article II of the Constitution and, therefore, eligible for the Presidency.

b. Section 1, Article II, of the Constitution states, in relevant part that “No Person except a natural born Citizen...shall be eligible for the Office of President.”

c. The Constitution does not define "natural born". The “Act to establish an Uniform Rule of Naturalization”, enacted March 26, 1790, (1 Stat. 103,104) provided that, “...the children of citizens of the United States, that may be born ... out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens: Provided that the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States.”

d. This statute is no longer operative, however, and its formula is not included in modern nationality statutes. In any event, the fact that someone is a natural born citizen pursuant to a statute does not necessarily imply that he or she is such a citizen for Constitutional purposes.

In other words: “We don’t know.”
It’s an absolutely open question. But it is not a “No Go”. Ted Cruz can run, and then let’s wait what the courts decide if he is elected. My guess, recalling the wording in the FAM document, and recalling the discussions about John McCain’s eligibility, is that it is much more likely that the courts will uphold his presidency, but this is just my humble opinion.

But what Trump does, and what  Mary Brigid McManamon does in the Washington Post’s article, is to misrepresent their humble opinion as fact. And McManamon is clearly dishonest, because she misrepresented the word “naturalization” with this claim: ”Because of the senator’s parentage, he did not have to follow the lengthy naturalization process that aliens without American parents must undergo. Instead, Cruz was naturalized at birth.”

This is simply not true, according to the cited FAM document:

7 FAM 1131.6-3 Not Citizens by “Naturalization”

Section 101(a)(23) INA (8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(23)) provides that the term "naturalization" means "the conferring of nationality of a state upon a person after birth, by any means whatsoever." Persons who acquire U.S. citizenship at birth by birth abroad to a U.S. citizen parent or parents who meet the applicable statutory transmission requirements are not considered citizens by naturalization.


[1] https://plus.google.com/+RolfWeber/posts/E5X8EmcoxgJ
[2] http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/86757.pdf