After a day of news reports and speculation surrounding Sen. Ted Cruz’s Canadian birth certificate, the Texas Republican released a statement late Monday indicating he would renounce his Canadian citizenship as needed.
“Because I was a U.S. citizen at birth, because I left Calgary when I was 4 and have lived my entire life since then in the U.S., and because I have never taken affirmative steps to claim Canadian citizenship, I assumed that was the end of the matter,” Cruz said in a statement released by spokesman Sean Rushton.
“Now the Dallas Morning News says that I may technically have dual citizenship. Assuming that is true, then sure, I will renounce any Canadian citizenship,” he added. “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 released his birth certificate this past weekend, fueling rumors that the Texas Republican is considering a 2016 run for president, and putting many of the so-called “birthers”—who tend to share Cruz’s Tea Party politics, but have repeatedly questioned Barack Obama’s eligibility to be president—in an awkward spot.
Cruz gave a copy of his Canadian birth certificate, issued by the Edmonton Department of Health in January 1971 shortly after his birth, to the Dallas Morning News. The document shows that Cruz was born in Alberta to an American mother and a Cuban father, a birth which granted him dual citizenship rights in both Canada and the United States.
“Sen. Cruz became a U.S. citizen at birth, and he never had to go through a naturalization process after birth to become a U.S. citizen,” his spokeswoman Catherine Frazier told the paper. “To our knowledge, he never had Canadian citizenship, so there is nothing to renounce.”
Morgan Whitaker