Whether Ted Cruz is your choice for the Republican presidential nomination or not - and we're not going to settle that today - at least we can settle the matter raised by any number of commenters who asked, "Hey, wasn't he born in Canada?"
Why yes, he was. And it's completely irrelevant. Despite the insistence of some folks that you're not a "natural-born citizen" unless you're born on U.S. soil, Cruz in fact is a natural-born citizen and he's eligible. And this video from the Wall Street Journal explains it pretty clearly
The key lies in the distinction between a natural-born citizen and a naturalized citizen. At its essence, this simply means there are two kinds of citizens - those who were citizens from birth and those who became citizens later on. A lot of people assume that you're only a natural-born citizen if you were physically born in the U.S., but that's not true. That's one way you can be a natural-born citizen, but another way is to be born abroad to parents who are citizens.
And this makes sense when you think about it. No one gets to choose where they're born, and if your parents are U.S. citizens and they happen to be abroad when your mother goes into labor and gives birth to you, there's really no reason that should impact your citizenship. To tell someone born under those circumstances that they have to later take a citizenship test and become "naturalized" would be absurd.
The reason the Constitution doesn't allow a naturalized citizen to become president is that they want to prevent true foreigners who might have another agenda from obtaining citizenship for the purpose of obtaining power and then misusing it to the detriment of the United States. That clearly doesn't apply to someone whose American parents happen to be in Calgary when he's born
So feel free to raise whatever objections you might have about the merits of Ted Cruz as a candidate, but let's put this one to bed. He is eligible to be president. (By the way, so is Barack Obama. That doesn't mean he should be president, but just over 50 percent of you blew the legitimate chance you had to keep it from happening. Dopes.)
