Via the DMN: Canada-born Ted Cruz became a citizen of that country as well as U.S.
Born in Canada to an American mother, Ted Cruz became an instant U.S. citizen. But under Canadian law, he also became a citizen of that country the moment he was born.
Unless the Texas Republican senator formally renounces that citizenship, he will remain a citizen of both countries, legal experts say.
That means he could assert the right to vote in Canada or even run for Parliament. On a lunch break from the U.S. Senate, he could head to the nearby embassy — the one flying a bright red maple leaf flag — pull out his Calgary, Alberta, birth certificate and obtain a passport.
“He’s a Canadian,” said Toronto lawyer Stephen Green, past chairman of the Canadian Bar Association’s Citizenship and Immigration Section.
The horror, eh?
For the record: he is clearly eligible to run for the presidency. I don’t think that there is a constitutional basis for making him renounce his dual citizenship (although one would guess that he would if he ran, but solely for symbolic reasons).
The headline is a dig as those who argued that Obama was not “natural born” because his father was Kenyan (note the Cruz’s father was Cuban). There was a lot of convoluted arguments over what “natural born” meant in birther circles.
Interestingly, Cruz’s father fought in the Cuban Revolution (on the side of the dreaded El Che and the brothers Castro (via a different DMN piece):
He was a guerilla, throwing Molotov cocktails and blowing up buildings," Ted Cruz told the Austin American-Statesman for a profile published in January 2006.
[…]
"I have many, many times described the full context of his fighting with [Fidel] Castro — in the broader sense, … not side by side, but on the same side as Castro," he said.
[…]
Ted Cruz said his father described himself as among young teenage boys who fought Batista and allied with Castro’s forces because "they didn’t know Castro was a Communist, what they knew was that Batista was a cruel and oppressive dictator."
Now, I can actually understand why a young Cuban would have fought against Bautista, and even how such a young man might later oppose Castro. Still, it is interesting how Obama’s birth and father’s biography has been treated in some quarters and the way the Cruz’s will not be in those same quarters (or so it would seem).
At any rate, the background is quite interesting.
