Is Ted Cruz even eligible to be President?

[Jim Lane]

39. Yes, he's eligible, but the simplistic answer you'll sometimes see is wrong.

Under current law, a child born abroad to one citizen parent and one noncitizen parent is a citizen at birth. Although the Constitution sets the "natural born citizen" requirement, it doesn't define it. The most sensible interpretation is that a child is eligible if the child was a citizen at birth, without naturalization or a retroactive change in the law. By that standard, a child born today in Cruz's situation would be eligible.

BUT the law was different when Cruz and Obama were born. At that time, the foreign-born child was automatically a citizen only if certain other requirements were met. One of those requirements was that the citizen parent must have lived in the U.S. for at least five years after attaining the age of 14. Obama's mother was only 18 when he was born so she didn't meet this requirement. If Obama had in fact been born in Kenya, he wouldn't be eligible. Of course, there's no evidence that he was born in Kenya, so the whole "issue" is silly, but, contrary to what you'll see over and over on DU (including in this thread), the birther argument is not based on misreading the law.

As for Cruz, his mother was older. As a matter of what any sensible person would conclude, she had in fact lived in the U.S. for more than five years. As a matter of technicalities, though, can she prove that? What proof is acceptable? Who decides? Which side has the burden of proof? She's still alive and she could swear to it under oath, but she probably doesn't have her utility bills from the 1960's. She could have averted this problem by doing some paperwork with the consulate at the time of her son's birth, but IIRC she didn't bother.

From Cruz's Wikipedia bio:

Cruz's mother was born and raised in Wilmington, Delaware,[23] in a family of Irish and Italian descent.[21][26] She was the first person in her family to attend college. She earned an undergraduate degree in mathematics from Rice University in Houston in the 1950s, working summers at Foley's and Shell Oil.[34] She later worked in Houston as a computer programmer at Shell.[27]

Evidence that she ever lived outside the U.S. before she and her husband moved to Canada is on a par with evidence that Obama's mother flew to Kenya to deliver her son -- that is, nonexistent. Both arguments are ridiculous. Of course, there's at least some room, for those so inclined, to demand, of any Obama birthers who now support Cruz, that they produce definitive proof of his mother's residence after she turned 14.

BTW, some of the birthers on Free Republic contend that Cruz and McCain (both born outside the U.S.) and even Jindal (born in the U.S. but to noncitizen parents) are ineligible.