‘I will renounce any Canadian citizenship’
Republican hopes Alberta birth no block to presidency
The latest “birther” controversy in U.S. politics has taken a new twist after Ted Cruz — the Canadian-born Republican senator from Texas — says if he indeed has Canadian citizenship, he will renounce it.
Cruz, who is seen by some as a potential Republican nominee for president in 2016, has been forced to defend his U.S. bona fides of late, going so far as to release his Province of Alberta birth certificate to the Dallas Morning News over the weekend.
The move was meant to underscore his mother’s U.S. citizenship and his eligibility to mount a run for the White House in 2016.
But the release of his Canadian birth certificate, issued in January 1971 by the Alberta Health Department’s division of vital statistics, stoked further debate about whether Cruz — who has lived in the United States since he was four — would fully meet the U.S. Constitution’s criteria of being a “natural born” citizen in order to hold the office of president.
The front-page the Dallas Morning News story on Cruz’s citizenship Monday ran under the banner headline: “Cruz may have to pick nation.”
“The Dallas Morning News says that I may technically have dual citizenship,” Cruz said in a statement Monday night. “Assuming that is true, then sure, I will renounce any Canadian citizenship. Nothing against Canada, but I’m an American by birth, and as a U.S. senator; I believe I should be only an American.”
Cruz is a Tea Party-backed sensation who topped the initial Republican contender in party primaries and who was then a strong Democratic challenger in the 2012 U.S. Senate election.
He was born in Calgary in 1970 while his parents were running a seismology research firm in the Alberta oil industry.
The solicitor general of Texas from 2003 to 2008, Cruz has been making campaign-style appearances in several U.S. states in recent weeks, prompting speculation that he may be planning to vie for the U.S. presidency in three years.
Cruz’s mother told him if he wanted Canadian citizenship, he could pursue it, but he never did, and Cruz said he thought that settled the matter.
At issue is the same stipulation under U.S. law that prevented former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was born in Austria, from considering a potential bid to become U.S. president.
And it has also fuelled a long-running controversy surrounding the birthplace of U.S. President Barack Obama, ultimately forcing him to release a copy of his State of Hawaii birth certificate to try to quash a belief or suspicion among many right-wing U.S. voters that Obama was born in Kenya.