Rick Sanchez

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas absolutely, positively cannot be president! He was born in Canada, which makes him a natural born Canadian, not a natural born American. Sorry, Ted, you can’t be both. It’s impossible. Just as you can’t pick your parents, you also can’t pick your “natural born” citizenry.

Not a single U.S. president has ever been born outside the territory of the United States — an exclusion that is specifically designated in Article II of our Constitution and hits those like me pretty hard.

I came to this country at the age of 2, and like every kid in my class at Mae M. Walters Elementary in Hialeah, Fla., I wanted desperately to believe we all could grow up to be president someday.

We can’t. That’s the law. It says I, Rick Sanchez, cannot be president of the United States. We become “naturalized” citizens, which gives us all the rights of “natural born” Americans, except one.

I understand that law. I can live with it and am willing to play by the rules. Cruz cannot. He wants to make his own rules. His arguments are, however, neither sound nor worthy of exceptions.

Citizen Cruz: Our view

Cruz’s mother chose to live in Canada. In other words, she didn’t just happen to be there on assignment, nor on vacation when she suddenly gave birth to her son prematurely. In fact, records seem to indicate she had lived there for several years before he was born.

Americans are fair. They would understand his position if it mirrored that of Sen. John McCain of Arizona. But Cruz was not born on a U.S. territory like the Canal Zone, Guam or Puerto Rico. Canada is a foreign country. When Cruz was born there, his parents were neither soldiers nor diplomats.

Fact is, any fair-minded American, using logic and common sense, will conclude that Cruz’s situation is exactly the opposite of what our Founding Fathers envisioned when they described who should or should not be allowed to be president.

Sen. Cruz, as a fellow immigrant and Hispanic American, I can sympathize, my friend. But the law is the law, and it says we can have it all — except that one little thing you seem to want most.

Rick Sanchez is a contributor for Fox News Latino and author of Conventional Idiocy, Why the New America is Sick of Old Politics.