Now that we’ve (mostly) agreed that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, there’s one final step: he must renounce his Hawaiian citizenship to legitimately serve as President of the United States.
That’s actually not right. Hawaii was a state when Obama was born there, and before that, it was an American territory (remember Pearl Harbor?).
But it is a splashy way to introduce the latest chapter in the story of Ted Cruz as possible presidential candidate.
Ted Cruz, U.S. Senator from Texas, was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada to an American mother. The question of whether he is qualified to be President arises from Article Two, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, which restricts the presidency to “natural born Citizen[s]”. Even though there has been a colloquial understanding that this means “born in the U.S.A.”, the point has never been litigated, and there is a growing sense that it simply means born American, rather than naturalized.
There is no dispute that Cruz was an American citizen at birth, being born of an American citizen, even if abroad. But after he released his birth certificate this weekend (see above), to answer speculation that he might not be qualified, a new wrinkle has cropped up. As indisputably as he is an American citizen, it now appears that he is—at this very moment—also a Canadian citizen. A number of experts on Canadian law are making it clear that when you are born in Canada, citizenship is automatic. You can renounce it later on if you choose, as some do. But right now, Cruz is both an American and Canadian citizen, able to vote in Canadian elections and even run for office there. (Note how weirdly complicated this would have been had he been born there before 1947, when his birth would have made him both an American citizen and a British subject: God Save the Queen.)
It isn’t clear whether Cruz has long known he was also a Canadian citizen, whether he secretly participates in Canadian ceremonies, whether he privately exhibits the legendary Canadian civility and sensibility, whether his support of the XL Pipeline was specially motivated, whether his plan to bring the U.S. government to a halt is meant to make his Canadian homeland look better by comparison, whether he still has feelings for Her Royal Highness, given that he is a citizen of the Commonwealth, if not the United Kingdom.
There is a political issue here, though one that Cruz might be able to turn to his advantage. He might be able to continue his Senate role as a dual citizen (at least it’s Canada, not Russia), but the presidency is another matter. If he does choose to renounce, he could do it on an ideological basis, pointing out how the socialist leanings of his homeland to the north have left it far behind the achievements of free market America, and how, unless America is careful, it will end up exactly like Canada—the land he chose to leave at the age of four, precisely because he knew that America was the true land of freedom and opportunity. Not to mention a whole lot warmer, particularly in Texas.
Bob Schwartz 