“I appreciate Governor Bush’s concern. I would note it seems he’s having a problem and getting confused between legal immigration and illegal immigration,” Cruz told reporters here ahead of his soapbox speech at the Iowa State Fair. “With regard to legal citizens, I’m a United States citizen because my mother was a United States citizen, born in Wilmington, Delaware. And it has been the law since the beginning of the country that the children of American citizens born here or abroad are American citizens by birth.”…

A day earlier, Bush suggested in New Hampshire that Cruz was the beneficiary of the broader birthright citizenship protection clause of the 14th Amendment. Bush opposes altering that language.

“Now, if people are here legally, they have a visa, and they have a child who’s born here, I think that they ought to be American citizens,” he said. “People like Marco Rubio, by the way, that’s how he came. You know, so to suggest that we make it impossible for a talented person like that not to be a candidate for president — or Ted Cruz. I mean, I think we’re getting a little overboard here, and we’re listening to the emotion rather than to the reality of this.”