I’ve honestly tried to avoid most of this mess the majority of the time, but enough people have sent this Examiner piece to me over the weekend that it’s clearly making the rounds and we should get it out of the way. Here’s the basic premise of this one, or at least one of them: Some Cruz detractors have been researching musty old Canadian law resources and stumbled upon a rather unique aspect of their history in terms of the citizenship process in the Great White North. There’s an odd codicil in there which indicates that from the period when Canada first started officially designating their own citizenship standards in 1947 (as opposed to being a citizen of the British Crown) until 1977, Canada didn’t officially recognize dual citizenship with any other country. This has tongues wagging in terms of what it meant to Cruz’ mother when he was born.

In order for Ted Cruz to have “become” a US citizen at birth in 1970, his mother would have had to retain exclusive citizenship to the US and filed a CRBA (Consular Report of Birth Abroad) to “obtain” exclusive US citizenship at the time for her son Ted and renounced his automatic “naturally acquired” Canadian citizenship. The process in itself is considered a very abbreviated form of “naturalization”, thereby making such persons born outside of the OFFICIAL territories of the United States absolutely ineligible to become President of these United States in at least this one circumstance alone. Given that Canadian law did not allow dual citizenship at the time, then IF his mother filed a CRBA in 1970, his Canadian citizenship would likely have needed to be renounced before a new US citizenship could be granted.

You can read the rest for yourself since it’s actually an interesting, if obscure, bit of Canadian history. Unfortunately for those looking to shake Cruz off his perch on a technicality, there are multiple problems with this theory and I already consulted one attorney about it this morning. First of all, the scenario described for the worst case timeline assumes a number of facts not in evidence. These include the question of whether or not her first husband was a Canadian citizen. (Not that it matters, but we don’t seem to have confirmation of that.) The authors also want to know if there was a Consular Report of Birth Abroad (CRBA) filed by his mother to “assign” American citizenship to her son, but again… there’s not a shred of evidence I’ve seen to indicate that such a document ever existed.

But the real nail in the coffin of this theory is the primary premise that Canada didn’t recognize dual citizenship at the time of Ted’s birth. The resounding answer to this question should be, “Yeah… and?” While that seems to be true from the documentation offered, whether or not Canada recognizes American citizenship is completely irrelevant to the discussion because Canada doesn’t get to determine who is or isn’t a citizen of the United States of America. Even if they were making a federal case out of it for any given US citizen it wouldn’t be an issue unless the person was trying to cross the border into Canada without a passport. If United States law recognizes you as a citizen, that’s the end of the discussion in terms of this constitutional qualifications question.

Look, if you don’t like Ted Cruz – for whatever reason – I get it. We all have to pick our own favorite candidates and make a case against the rest. But this dog just isn’t going to hunt, folks.