Did Ted Cruz’s Mother Become a British or Canadian Citizen?

RECURRING THEME:  FOREIGN RESIDENCE, TRAVEL, OFFSPRING, EMPLOYMENT

by Sharon Rondeau

(Apr. 21, 2016) — On Tuesday, The Post & Email exclusively reported that documents located by a local researcher in the United Kingdom show that presidential candidate Ted Cruz’s mother’s first child, Michael, who died at the age of five months, was registered under two different last names on his respective birth and death certificates.

A short time ago, a researcher in the United States, “Jim Redding,” placed a solicitation for a researcher in the UK through a professional online forum, receiving a prompt response stating, “I can do that” in regard to the documents Redding said he was seeking.

Eleanor Darragh Cruz was first married to Alan Wilson of Ft. Worth, TX in 1956.  Eleanor was born in Delaware and graduated from Rice University in Houston, where the two met.  She was the “first in her family” of 17 siblings to attend college, according to The Dallas Morning News.

Eleanor’s first child, Michael, was born in June 1966 and died on December 7 that same year.  According to McClatchy News Service in January of this year, Alan Wilson said in an interview that he and Eleanor divorced before Michael’s birth and that he is not Michael’s father.

The report related, in Alan Wilson’s words, that Eleanor “asked him if she could use his last name on the birth certificate” even though they had been living apart for several years and were divorced.  However, images received by The Post & Email from Redding via the British researcher indicate that Michael’s last name was given as “Darragh” on his birth certificate and “Wilson” on his death certificate. Alan Wilson reportedly was the individual to report the infant’s passing.

McClatchy said it obtained documents from British archives but did not display them.

The last name “Wilson” also appears on Ted Cruz’s birth certificate denoting his mother.  Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada on December 22, 1970.

Roger Stone, a longtime Republican political strategist close to the rivaling Donald Trump campaign, last month wrote that the baby was Alan Wilson’s son.

Cruz rests his claim that he is a “natural born Citizen” eligible for the U.S. presidency solely on his birth to an American citizen, Eleanor.  His father, Rafael Bienvenido Cruz, was born in Cuba, received asylum in the U.S. prior to the outbreak of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, and built a geological-service business in Calgary roughly between 1968 and 1974.

Rafael B. Cruz reportedly became a Canadian citizen during that time, with one report stating the year as 1973.  Canadian naturalization records are not available to the public without a signed privacy waiver from the subject.

Article II, Section 1, clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution requires the president and commander-in-chief to be at least 35 years of age, have resided in the country for 14 years, and to be a “natural born Citizen.”  Although the term is not defined anywhere in our founding documents, many believe that the Framers were desirous of avoiding any type of foreign influence in the nation’s chief executive, as evidenced by statements made by Alexander Hamilton and John Jay.

Since 2007, many Americans have questioned Barack Hussein Obama’s eligibility under the “natural born Citizen” clause, as he claims a foreign-citizen father who studied in the U.S. on a temporary student visa which was not renewed in 1964.  Obama’s claimed birth in Hawaii has not been substantiated by any hospital there, nor has any hospital anywhere in the world claimed to have been the place of his birth.

On March 1, 2012, a criminal investigation launched by Maricopa County, AZ Sheriff Joseph M. Arpaio conducted by his Cold Case Posse revealed that the long-form birth certificate image posted on the White House website purporting to prove that Obama was born in Hawaii is a “computer-generated forgery.”  Also announced as fraudulent is Obama’s Selective Service registration form, the original of which the Selective Service System refused to grant access to Arpaio and Cold Case Posse lead investigator Mike Zullo.

Since 2007, Obama sycophants and supporters have ridiculed and attempted to silence those questioning Obama’s eligibility, insisting that a birth within the United States is sufficient to qualify as a “natural born Citizen.”  With Cruz, however, those who say he is eligible and ridicule dissenters say that a birth to a U.S.-citizen parent anywhere in the world is sufficient.

Former presidential candidate Marco Rubio, who was born in the U.S. to two parents admitted to the country but not yet citizens, also claims he is a “natural born Citizen” eligible to the presidency.

The precepts of “jus soli” and “jus sanguinis” have both been used by various countries to determine who is and is not a citizen, with “jus soli” meaning “the law of the soil,” or physical birthplace; and “jus sanguinis” the law of inherited citizenship through one’s parents.

Some constitutional scholars who have studied the issue intensely since Obama first announced his candidacy in 2007 believe that both jus soli and jus sanguinis are necessary for a person to be considered a “natural born Citizen” of the United States.  Some scholars say that the fact that Cruz was born outside the United States is enough to disqualify him irrespective of the parents’ citizenship status at the time of his birth.  “Birthplace is the simplest test,” wrote David Savage of The Los Angeles Times in January of this year in a discussion of whether or not Cruz might meet the “natural born” criterion.  Savage answers the question as to who is ineligible with “Naturalized Americans who were born abroad to parents who were not U.S. citizens.”

An editorial appearing in the Harvard Law Review Forum 12 days before Cruz declared his presidential candidacy makes the case that a child born anywhere in the world to one U.S.-citizen parent is a “natural born Citizen” because he did not require naturalization to become a citizen.  However, one of the authors, former acting solicitor general Neal Katyal, also stated in a 2010 brief submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court in a citizenship case that “[a] person born out of the jurisdiction of the United States can only become a citizen by being naturalized, either by treaty* * * or by authority of Congress” (pp. 27-28).

Both Cruz and Katyal have cited the 1790 Naturalization Act, which said that children “born beyond sea” to citizen parents are “considered as natural born citizens” as justification for their eligibility position while not revealing that the act was repealed and replaced five years later with no further mention of “natural born citizens.”

By the Canadian Citizenship Act of 1947, anyone born in Canada was considered a citizen, regardless of the citizenship of the parents, except in the case of foreign diplomats.

On Cruz’s birth certificate, provided to The Dallas Morning News in August 2013, his mother’s name is stated as “Eleanor Elizabeth Wilson.”  Her own birth certificate, a certified copy of which was obtained exclusively by The Post & Email in late January from the state of Delaware, indicates her “full name” as “Eleanor Darragh.”

Cruz has not produced a Certificate of Citizenship or any documentation tying him to the United States at birth or afterward, despite his claim to have been a “citizen at birth” of the United States.  Although Cruz’s spokeswoman claimed in 2013 that Cruz did not have to go through a “naturalization” process to become a U.S. citizen, Maine Governor Paul LePage made public earlier this year that two of his children, born in Canada to two U.S.-citizen parents, were “naturalized” and cannot serve as president.  “I’ve already looked into it,” he told radio host Howie Carr.

On April 11, NBC News termed Cruz a “naturalized” U.S. citizen as of 2014, the same year he renounced his Canadian citizenship which he at first said he did not possess.

Several observers of the histories of Barack Obama and Ted Cruz have commented that there appeared to be striking similarities between the mothers of the two first-term U.S. senators seeking the office of the president. Obama’s mother, reportedly born in Kansas, is said to have lived in Texas, California, Washington State, Hawaii, Indonesia, Pakistan, and New York City. Cruz’s mother has reportedly lived and worked in Texas, Louisiana, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Both mothers reportedly attended college and excelled in areas of study uncommon for women of the era. Both reportedly gave birth to children in foreign countries: Obama’s mother to Maya Soetoro in Indonesia in 1970; and Cruz’s mother to Michael in Great Britain in 1966.

Both candidates’ fathers were born in foreign countries, with Obama’s father never obtaining U.S. citizenship and Cruz’s father becoming a U.S. citizen in 2005.

In a Mother’s Day article from 2012, ABC News reported that “By the time he was 10, Obama had lived in two countries.”  By the time Ted Cruz was four, he also had lived in two countries.  Neither of the nations outside the U.S. where Cruz and Obama lived – Indonesia in Obama’s case and Canada in Cruz’s – permitted dual citizenship at the time.

Redding speculates that Eleanor Darragh may have become a British citizen while in the UK, which could have accelerated Canadian citizenship during her time spent there with her second husband, Rafael Bienvenido Cruz.

Continuing his thoughts from our initial article, Redding speculated as to Eleanor’s life following Michael’s death:

Fast-forward from the English life that she had, she returns to Texas, moves to New Orleans, gets the job in the oil company; she meets Cruz Sr.; the two of them get assigned to go up to Canada.  When they get up there, they realize, “Hey, we have a great thing going, maybe we can start a company.”  They date or whatever, and then she says, in order to start a business, we can fast-track this whole thing.  I can apply; become a citizen, then you’ll be fast-tracked when we get married.  You marry me, and we’ll both be citizens; we can start this company…

Things go along well, and 1970 comes along, and Ted is born, and behold:  he’s a natural-born Canadian citizen.

According to documents posted by RadarOnline.com, Eleanor and Rafael B. Cruz were married in 1969, which was after they reportedly went to Canada.

The Post & Email commented to Redding that in the early 1960s, it was unusual for women to travel abroad, work in foreign countries, divorce and remarry, to which he responded:

In the broader context of society, that was true, but we had a cultural upheaval in the late 1950s and early 196os.  There was a “free-love” movement; birth control came to the fore along with “women’s liberation,” which was the adoption of a counter-culture lifestyle.

“McClatchy said they located Alan Wilson and spoke with him, and that he claimed not to be the father of Michael, although the death certificate shows that he reported the death.  That’s an interesting discrepancy.”

Maybe it’s not a discrepancy.  He did report the death, because she may have, after this episode, decided that the marriage wasn’t going to work and thought, “I’m going to put a nail in the coffin of this marriage by telling him that I had a child out of wedlock.”  I presume she let him know:  full disclosure, sort-of like “This is who I am; there’s no shame in what I’ve done; I had a baby; the marriage is over; you’re this principled guy, and I want to make sure that you’re not coming back.”

Having been divorced myself, I knew when my ex-wife made a decision that “it’s over.”  She did everything in her power to telegraph to me that “it’s over.  There’s nothing you can do to reconcile, and I’m going to ensure that there’s nothing you can do to reconcile.”  So this could have been a bridge-burning exercise on her part.

“Cruz reportedly wrote in his book published last year that Michael’s death ended Eleanor’s marriage to Wilson.”

It’s my view that when you start to connect the dots, the personality and profile of Eleanor might lean toward a mild, utilitarian mindset where everything outside of yourself is unimportant.  She may have used the circumstances as a type of “back-door” to independence.

“Why do you think it appears that Michael was documented a British citizen?”

It could have been part of an infatuation with the guy who impregnated her; it could have been the need for a “back door;” she might have thoughtfully considered maintaining residency there…perhaps her money ran out or she couldn’t get a job. Something happened where she decided, “I guess I’ll have to go back home to Texas.”  It might have been a lack of resources.

“Did you pay the British researcher his fee?”

Oh, yes, he’s been paid.

Regarding how he believes the researcher located the documents, Redding told us, “I got the feeling that he physically went to the locations and physically got the documents from the registrar of each village or hamlet.”

As The Post & Email reported on Tuesday, paper copies of the documents located by the British researcher were placed in the mail on Monday and dispatched to Heathrow Worldwide DC.

On Wednesday, Redding reported that he received a tip from a source as to suggested further research which could uncover clues as to whether or not Eleanor Darragh ever obtained British or Canadian citizenship.