YOUR PAPERS, PLEASE
Anyone can spot events as they are occurring, but once again you and I are sharper than most by noticing what is not happening. There is not a flurry of emails, no callers to those nutty radio talk shows (“Rush, Obama has put Jell-O in in my kidneys.”) and no alarms from unknown scientists who claim global warming is caused by the Denver Broncos defensive line. What no one is pointing out is that Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, (or so he says) is foreign-born and thus constitutionally ineligible to serve as President of These Beloved United States of America! God bless John Wayne!
Sure, we have heard “experts” say that since Cruz’s mother was an American citizen, her children are, too. This is exactly the same – but in reverse order — as the much-maligned anchor babies racket (umbilical amnesty), whereby if Mom gets across the Rio and to the El Paso General Hospital two minutes before her child’s birth, that new American is a citizen, so the mother and the father and their other 16 children go to the head of the citizenship line.
You believe that Cruz-citizenship fairy tale? Then I’ve got some Starbucks cups touting race relations to sell you. So let’s look at the record. Rafael Edward Cruz (if Barack Hussein Obama can call himself Barry, then Rafael can call himself Ted) was born on Dec. 22, 1970, in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, where his parents, Eleanor Elizabeth Darragh Wilson and Rafael Bienvenido Cruz — who was born in 1939 in Matanzas, Cuba — were working in the awl bidness. Rafael Sr. and his family eventually had to move to Houston. Rafael Jr. went to private grade and high schools, then to college at Princeton and Harvard Law. After graduation, he worked for a series of law firms, held appointed government jobs and made his first election bid as a U.S. Senator. Hey, you have to start somewhere.
Now here’s where it gets interesting. In August 2013, after the Dallas Morning News pointed out that Cruz had dual Canadian-American citizenship, he applied to formally renounce his Canadian citizenship. He ceased being a citizen of Canada, on May 14, 2014, almost a year and a half after being elected to the U.S. Senate. Notice what did not happen: all those years, throughout appointed and elected positions, Cruz never mentioned he held Canadian citizenship, and could have just as easily been elected to the Canadian Parliament and run for King of Canada. Indeed, if the nosey left-wing press hadn’t squealed, we might never know.
And where are the birthers in all of this? Back when it was clear Barack Obama was born in Kenya and had sworn an oath to the Mau-Mau, al-Quida and the Hitler Youth, we were all inundated with this story. There was a cottage industry based on Obama the Kenyan. An acquaintance of mine from back in high school kept emailing proof of the Obama birth conspiracy. He even sent me a copy of a signed birth certificate from the Royal Nairobi African Hospital for Future U.S. Presidents, or something like that. Turned out the hospital didn’t open until years later, there was no such doctor with that name in all of Kenya and other small clues that somehow alerted those nosey reporters. Other than that, it was a genuine document. Speaking of fakes, both Honolulu newspapers ran Barack’s birth announcements back in 1961 as part of the Obamas’ long-term diabolical plan to seize the White House 48 years later.
Presidential birthplace problems are not new. Brilliant and far-seeing though he was, Alexander Hamilton couldn’t run for president because he was (a) born in Nevis, British West Indies, (b) illegitimate (c) shot dead before he could get a Green Card. (Today the illegitimate part might be an asset.) Questions were raised about Barry Goldwater who was born in Arizona Territory, not then a state, and John McCain was born at Coco Solo Naval Air Station in the Panama Canal Zone, which is close enough for government work. Presidential candidate George Romney, Mitt’s father, was born in Mexico where George’s grandfather had fled from U.S. law with his several wives. None of this mattered mainly because none of them won.
Oddly, our Founding Fathers, who wrote that must-be-born etc. part of the Constitution, were all born British subjects. They got around it by declaring in Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution: “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, etc.” They grandfathered themselves in.
Have you ever actually seen, like with your own eyes, Cruz’s citizenship papers? Are they in French? Does he say, “It’s aboot time I shed-yuled to go on holiday.”? He may secretly love hockey. Do his black ostrich-skin boots (in Texas one not need not insert cowboy before boots) have clip-on skates? Cruz has long been the Number 1 critic of Obamacare, likening it to that communistic health system they have in Canada. When his wife left her job at Goldman Sachs to help in Ted’s campaign, she lost the family’s health care coverage, so what was the first thing our Canuck did? He signed up for that Canadian-inspired Obamacare, and probably gets his medicine cheaper from a pharmacy in Edmonton. Need I say more?
The father, Rafael Bienvenido Cruz, didn’t become a naturalized U.S. citizen until 2005. This brings up a question: Does Ted also have Cuban citizenship? Probably not. He’d have to be born in Miami. Also, with his constant politicking for president since his senatorial election, has anyone actually seen Cruz in the U.S. Senate? “Cruz? I’ve heard that name.” said one senator. “Is he the guy with the clip-on skates?” One final question: how long must we put up with the rhetorically challenged and their “Cruz control” line? It was shopworn when Hamilton was still trying to re-write the Constitution.
Ashby is a citizen at ashby2@comcast.net
