By JAVIER MANJARRES

Conservatives like Sean Hannity consider  U.S. Senator Ted Cruz to be the new “fearless” face of the Republican Party, and while no one is really saying it out loud, the hope is that he will make a run for President,  and uphold his conservative principles and values throughout the campaign.

Last week’s Republican Presidential darling was Senator Marco Rubio, but after his immigration reform debacle that caused him to fall out of favor with a good portion of the Republican base, Rubio has taken a backseat to Cruz.

Let’s make something very clear. Rubio is not out of the running for the 2016 Republican Presidential nomination, not by a long shot.

While I expect the anti-Rubio lobby to disagree with me on this issue, Rubio could be in a good spot for 2016. After all, there is still a lot of time to go before the Republican Presidential primary field is defined, and time is what Rubio will need to get over his immigration fumble.

But the big issue that seems to be striking the ire of some conservatives and “birthers” is not that Rubio is damaged goods because of his recent change of position on immigration reform, but because some feel he is not eligible to be President because his parents were born in Cuba.

While Rubio was born in Miami, Florida, one would think that Ted Cruz would have a harder time with the “Birthers,” considering that he was  born in Calgary, Alberta.

Cruz’s father, was born in Cuba, his mother in Delaware, and the reason Cruz was born in Canada was because both his parents were working there at the time.

Cruz recently said he would renounce his Canadian citizenship, stating that he was American.

 “Now the Dallas Morning News says that I may technically have dual citizenship,” Cruz said in a statement. “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.”-Senator Ted Cruz (WaPo)

While the “Birther” nation believes that both men are not eligible to be President of the United States, it seems as if they have are especially hell-bent on riding Rubio’s hide more than Cruz. Why is that?

Some, including myself, seem to believe that the Rand Paul’s of the world are behind the “Rubio is not eligible” campaign, as they see him as being the bigger threat to a possible Senator Rand Paul GOP Presidential nomination.

If Cruz, Rubio and Paul decide to run for President in 2016, Paul and Cruz would be fighting for the same vote, leaving Rubio just out of reach of their tussle, where he can, and will, pick up scrap votes and possibly steal the nomination away from one of them.

So again, are Cruz and Rubio eligible to be President of the United States?

According to the “law of the land,” the United States Constitution, three requirements for eligibility to be president are offered. First, a person must be 35 years old. Second, he or she must be a resident “within the U.S.” for 14 years. And finally, the person seeking the office of President must be a “natural born citizen.”

The Constitution does not specifically define the term “natural born citizen.”

 No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.- Article 2, US Constitution

So by this explanation in the Constitution, both Rubio and Cruz meet the criteria, and are eligible to be President of the United States. Expect some to say that because Cruz was born in Canada, Canadian law states that he is Canadian by birth, making him ineligible to be President of the United States.

  But Cruz, by being entitled to citizenship at birth because his mother was a U.S. citizen and by being in the U.S. for more than 14 years, would seem to qualify as a “natural born citizen” under the definition in the report.

The 2011 Congressional Research Service clarified this point further.

 The weight of legal and historical authority indicates that the term “natural born” citizen would mean a person who is entitled to U.S. citizenship “by birth” or “at birth”, either by being born “in” the United States and under its jurisdiction, even those born to alien parents; by being born abroad to U.S. citizen-parents; or by being born in other situations meeting legal requirements for U.S. citizenship “at birth”.

Such term, however, would not include a person who was not a U.S. citizen by birth or at birth, and who was thus born an “alien” required to go through the legal process of “naturalization” to become a U.S. citizen.^[1]

But lets put aside what the Congressional Research Service came up with, and stick with what the Constitution says. After all, isn’t that what strict Constitutional Conservatives and Libertarians, who swear by the Constitution, ask all Americans to do?

Has anyone questioned the Presidential eligibility of the Founding Fathers of the United States? Technically, all of the parents, including the Founding Fathers themselves were not U.S. Citizens at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, making them all ineligible to be President, right?

Also, couldn’t this adoption of the Constitution be considered a form of “amnesty” for these British expatriates, who like many illegal immigrants today, decided to break away and renounce their citizenship from the country in which they came from?

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