Quote:
Originally Posted by timun
Ted Cruz's father was not American, he was Cuban. It seems like eons ago now, but in the Republican primaries in 2016 Cruz's eligibility was questioned by his opponents for that very reason.
The "natural-born citizen" requirement has been interpreted to mean "born with American citizenship", whether by virtue of being born on American soil or being conferred American citizenship by descent. Cruz was automatically American by birth, by virtue of his mother being American (and had lived in the US since birth and hadn't moved to Canada until well into adulthood).
Musk became a naturalized US citizen in 2002. His closest ties to American citizenry are through his maternal grandfather, who was born in the US. His grandfather moved to Canada as a child and Musk's mother was born in Canada, and she did not automatically receive American citizenship because her father—while American by birth—had been living outside the US since childhood. Since she wasn't American by birth, neither was Elon, thus he's not a "natural-born citizen" and can't be president.
|
That's interesting, because US citizenship operates different from every country on the planet, save Eritrea. If you have a parent who is a natural born US citizen, you can be born elsewhere and you're a US citizen. What that means isn't jus that you can vote in elections and such, it means that you have the pay US taxes. I don't want to derail this thread, but then again it's a disaster and it feels like Twitter was sold eons ago!
Google "accidental Americans" and you can find all kinds of stories of people who had no idea that they were US citizens. Never lived there, never voted and had no attachments...but owed taxes. In my line of work that becomes a problem for people when it comes to things like RESPs/TFSAs and such (along with the other tax issues that arise). And if you have a passing interest but wonder...no, you don't have to "claim" the citizenship for it to be valid. You are a US citizen in those cases and have to deal with that ramification...either through renouncing this citizenship or filing US taxes and the associated things.