Quote Originally Posted by Thorne View Post
His mother was born in Kansas, making her a citizen from birth. Doesn't matter how long she lived in the US, though she did spend her childhood here. I didn't know there was a requirement for a natural born citizen to spend a certain amount of time in the US to maintain their citizenship.
Not 'maintain' - to pass it to their children. Simply being the child of a US citizen is not, in itself, sufficient to make you one - which, apart from anything else, is why there is a green card category for 'children of US citizens' - because they are not all automatically citizens themselves.

The requirement at the time was that the mother, to quote USCIS, must have been: "physically present in the U.S. or its territories for a period of at least ten years at some time in his or her life prior to the birth, at least five of which were after his or her 14th birthday".

Ted Cruz, on the other hand, was born in Canada, to a mother who was a natural born US citizen. His father, on the other hand, was born in Cuba, as a Cuban citizen, and fought for Castro during the revolution there. Legally, therefore, he is a US citizen, through his mother, regardless of his place of birth. By the same token, it doesn't matter where Obama was born, as long as his mother was a US citizen at the time.
Wrong, as explained above: they would be citizens provided their mothers met the residency requirements. Since she was 18 at the time, Obama's mother could not possibly have met the requirement to be resident in the US for five years after the age of 14. Presumably Cruz's mother does meet the requirement - the US consulate would have checked at the time, otherwise they would have needed to apply for a green card for him when moving back to the US.