Opinion: With Ted Cruz running, 'birther' movement will now get into high gear

Sen. Ted Cruz, his wife and their two daughters on March 23, 2015, at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va. (ap)

Texas Senator Ted Cruz has formally come out as a candidate for President. That makes him the first official major candidate to announce. He is the first former Canadian citizen to run for President of the United States.

In being a foreign-born citizen running for President, he joins George Romney (father of Mitt Romney and former Governor of Michigan), a Mexican citizen, and John McCain, a Panamanian-born candidate for President. Like them, there are people who insist that Cruz is not “qualified” to run for President because (A) he was born in Canada, and/or (B) his father was born in Cuba.

Every Hispanic in the country must join in brutalizing the crazy people, for at the core of their fanatical barnyard excrement is a hatred of what both Rubio and Cruz are: American Hispanics.

— Raoul Lowery Contreras

These detractors base their view on false interpretations of the Constitution of the United States that states (in Article II, Section One) “No person except a natural born citizen, of a citizen at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President (and Vice 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.”

To amplify Article II, Section One is the 14th Amendment that clearly states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States…” Those words completely destroy any argument that Miami-born Marco Rubio is not “qualified” to be President because his parents weren’t citizens when he was born in Miami.

Muddying the political waters is the decade-long arguments of such as Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio who with the help of a special “posse” determined that Obama isn’t qualified to be President, in that he is joined by golf course builder and failed casino operator Donald Trump; to wit: that Hawaii-born President Barack Obama is illegally President because (A) he was actually born in the African nation of Kenya, or (B) that he is unqualified because his father was a Kenyan.

Neither argument is valid. There is not a single Supreme Court decision, dating back to 1806, with one exception, the Dred Scott decision of 1857, that hasn’t ruled on what natural born citizenship means. The 1857 Scott decision was overturned on the battlefield and with the 14th Amendment. The only argument these people have is some words written by an uninformed European in the late 1800s that was totally ignorant of American law and the Constitution.

Even, if Obama was born in Kenya, so what? There is no doubt that Obama’s mother was a natural born U.S. citizen. Coincidentally, the very first “immigration-citizenship” law passed by the U.S. Congress under the Constitution was in 1790; it clearly stated that children born to American mothers – no matter where – were American citizens by birth.

Explanation: Many American women during the American war of independence (1775-1783) married or at least had relations with British soldiers and bore their children. No problem if they stayed in the 13 colonies but if they ran off to Canada to escape from “American harassment” their children were born in British territory not the United States. Many of these women returned to the United States when the new Congress of the United States passed that 1790 “immigration” law because their children and they themselves were United States citizens.

Senator Cruz’ mother was born in the state of Delaware, period, end of discussion. Except, it is not — as these hard-core people still maintain that Hawaii-born Obama is illegally President and they will attack Cruz with the same feverish intensity.

Some of these people are joined by another cabal of critics who maintain the other potential major Hispanic Presidential candidate, Florida U.S. Senator Marco Rubio is also unqualified to run for President because even though he was born in Miami, Florida and of that there is no doubt. The critics maintain that Rubio is unqualified because his father and mother were Cuban-born and didn’t become American citizens until after Marco was born.

Considering that the entire “birther” controversy was surreptitiously started against Barack Obama by Hillary Clinton operatives in the 2008 presidential campaign, it is amazing that the “birther” controversy has been joined and furthered by many like Arpaio and Trump. The “birther” movement will now get into high gear in the Republican primary aimed at Senators Cruz and Rubio.

As we used to learn (in typing class), “now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.”

These men, not their spokespeople, must attack these ridiculous people and slap them around like never seen in American politics. They must be brutal in handling these people by facts, informed rebuttals and ridicule, especially ridicule.

Every Hispanic in the country must join in brutalizing the crazy people, for at the core of their fanatical barnyard excrement is a hatred of what both Rubio and Cruz are: American Hispanics.