Where Was Senator Ted Cruz Born?

Ted Cruz. Getty

Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican presidential candidate, was actually born in Canada. But because his mother was a U.S. citizen, he is considered a natural-born citizen as well, and is therefore eligible to run for president.

Cruz was born in 1970 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. His family later moved to Texas, when he was 4.

“The facts are clear,” Cruz told Fox News in March. “It’s been federal law for over two centuries that the child of an American citizen born abroad is a citizen by birth, a natural born citizen.”

A 2011 report by the Congressional Research Service supports his eligibility:

The weight of legal and historical authority indicates that the term “natural born” citizen would mean a person who is entitled to U.S. citizenship “by birth” or “at birth,” either by being born “in” the United States and under its jurisdiction, even those born to alien parents; by being born abroad to U.S. citizen-parents; or by being born in other situations meeting legal requirements for U.S. citizenship “at birth.” Such term, however, would not include a person who was not a U.S. citizen by birth or at birth, and who was thus born an “alien” required to go through the legal process of “naturalization” to become a U.S. citizen.

His mother, Eleanor Elizabeth Darragh Wilson, was born in Delaware. His father, Rafael Bienvenido Cruz, was born in Cuba, and moved to the United States in 1957. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2005.

Cruz gave up his Canadian citizenship in 2013.

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