Canadian-born Ted Cruz says “facts are clear” he’s eligible to be president

Sen. Ted Cruz rejected questions Sunday over his eligibility to be president, saying that although he was born in Canada “the facts are clear” that he’s a U.S. citizen. “My mother was born in Wilmington, Delaware. She’s a U.S. citizen, so I’m a U.S. citizen by birth,” Cruz told ABC. “I’m not going to engage in a legal debate.” The Texas senator was born in Calgary, where his mother and father were working in the oil business. His father, Rafael Cruz, left Cuba in the 1950s to study at the University of Texas and subsequently became a naturalized citizen.

President Obama has been hounded by critics who contend he was born outside the U.S. and, therefore, ineligible to win the White House. Obama was born in Hawaii. But some Democratic critics have taken the same charge against Obama by so-called “birthers” and turned it against Cruz. Both Cruz and Obama share one thing in common — both were born to mothers who were American citizens. The Supreme Court has not definitively ruled on presidential eligibility requirements.  But a congressional study concludes that the constitutional requirement that a president be “a natural born citizen” includes those born abroad of one citizen parent who has met U.S. residency requirements.

“I can tell you where I was born and who my parents were. And then as a legal matter, others can worry about that. I’m not going to engage,” Cruz said in the interview with “This Week” on ABC. Cruz was in Iowa last week, speaking to a group of conservative pastors and a state GOP fundraiser. He’s already been to the early-primary state of South Carolina and is scheduled to headline a fundraiser in New Hampshire next month, fueling speculation that he may be weighing a presidential bid. The freshman Texas senator, who took office in January, said it’s premature to talk about a 2016 presidential race.

In the Senate, Cruz has established himself as a leading opponent of immigration reform that includes a “pathway to citizenship” for millions of undocumented immigrants in the United States. A potential political rival, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, has championed that idea as part of a comprehensive approach to dealing with illegal immigration. Cruz said Rubio “proceeded in good faith” but was wrong. “I think a patch to citizenship for those who are here illegally is profoundly unfair to millions of legal immigrants who followed the rules,” he said.

At one point during the interview, Cruz noted a satirical critique by comedian Jon Stewart, who called him a “dirty syrup guzzler” – a reference to the senator’s birth in Canada. “I will tell you, in response to that, I did send Jon Stewart a letter saying that I rarely guzzled syrup,” he said. “But any time that I did, it was Texas syrup. And I sent him a bottle of Texas syrup and invited him to a syrup festival in the state of Texas.”