Chinese Premier Li Keqiang gives an address during a news conference with French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault (not pictured) in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing December 6, 2013.
Credit: Reuters/Mark Ralston/Pool
CANDY CROWLEY: I have to get this birth certificate off the table. I think it’s fairly cool that you had dual citizenship. You could go run for the Canadian parliament. You could go run for president. What’s wrong with that?
SEN. CRUZ: I think it’s the silly season in politics. I was born in 1970 in Calgary, Canada; my parents were working there in the oil and gas business. My mother was a U.S. citizen by birth born in Wilmington, Delaware, so under U.S. law, I’m an American citizen by birth. And when I was four, we moved back to Texas, so I grew up in Houston, Texas. It’s always been my home. And when I was a kid, my mom told me that if I ever wanted to, I could affirmatively choose to claim Canadian citizenship. But, I got a U.S. passport when I was in high school. I never did anything to affirmatively claim citizenship, so I thought that was the end of the matter. And then the Dallas Morning News ran a headline where they went and talked to some immigration lawyers, and said technically, the immigration lawyer said that I still had dual citizenship. So the question was raised, if you do, would you renounce your Canadian citizenship? I said, look, if that’s right, then sure. Because serving as a U.S. senator, I was an American by birth and serving as a U.S. Senator it’s only right that I be only an American.
CROWLEY: But you know how it’s being interpreted. Oh, clearing the way for a 2016 presidential run. We want to get this issue off the table.
CRUZ: Listen, there’s a lot of silliness. I thought it was a reasonable question when the Dallas Morning News asked for my birth certificate, so I gave it to them.
