There’s no reason to, since he’s not the president and his birth status has no bearing on his job in the Senate. McCain’s status did get talked about a little bit during the campaign, but not nearly as much as Obama’s did.
It is much harder to lose your citizenship than your green card. It is also much easier to travel worldwide on a US passport than my home country’s or my wife’s. If you have a UK passport, that might be just as good, maybe better.
There are also a few employment opportunities only open to citizens, including most that have a security clearance requirement. If one family member wants to work in a sensitive job, typically the whole immediate family needs to get their naturalization done, because having a non-citizen sibling, parent or spouse is usually fatal.
When I was sworn in as a citizen, I was standing only five feet away from someone who was also being sworn in, but who has just received awards of recognition from an agency of a not-so-friendly foreign government for keeping tabs on expatriates from that country in the US (foreign students, workers, green card holders and citizens) so that the home country government could have a “friendly chat” with thier relatives back home if they got out of line in the US. This person was able to recite the oath of citizenship just fine. If your son or daughter said something “unfriendly” at a workshop or conference, or even a social gathering, you could lose your job, housing, electricity, etc.
I assure you that appeasing conspiracy theory nutballs is the furthest thought from my mind. I have thought about this issue for many years and I consider the natural born citizen restriction to be an archaic and unfair rule. I understand its origins and that it was, at one time, a good and necessary idea. But I think that time has passed.
As for making Arnold President, I would consider it. Not because I think he would be good at the job, I have no idea if he would be (in reality my knowledge about his politics is very limited), I just think that if the opportunity arises we owe it to posterity to do something as crazy as electing this guy as President.
I like this a lot. I would like the “natural born” thing to go away too. I’m a naturalized citizen, who loves my birth country, and yet I know on which side I’d be in a war, even when I disagree with our wars. I may not fight for the US but I’d never take up arms against her.
I think it’s not fitting for a country that is comprised of immigrants.
I think you might not anticipate in advance that you could end up in a hostile situation with your home country. It is not that uncommon for people to have divided loyalties, or be very loyal to the USA as long as we are friendly towards country X.
I remember in the ethnic Serbian community in the late 1990s, people who cosidered themselves loyal US citizens, finding themselves in a pickle over the bombing of Belgrade. While that was a relatively slow developing situation, you can easily conceive of a situation getting hostile in a hurry. Suppose what happened in Germany in 1930-33 happens in Japan, while we have a first generation Japanese-American president who has close relatives in Japan. If Japan starts invading its neighbors right and left, is she (the POTUS) going to green light the bombing the cities where her aunts, uncles and cousins, maybe even his parents live? Even before we have hostilites break out, is she going to bend over backwards to prevent hostilities from breaking out regardless of the national interest?
This is the kind of thing the founding fathers were thinking of because the Europeans fought each other with depressing regularity and with frequently changing alliances.
Unless someone is going to tell me that something has changed in human nature over the last 230 years, it doesn’t seem to make any sense to change this so we can feel good about our inclusiveness.
ETA: I use Japan specifically because of the history of internment of Japanese Americans, an issue I do not wish to duck. And because the Japanese are most reluctant even now to admit that they did anything wrong in WWII at least as far as their actions in Asia were concerned. They are happy to kiss American ass, because we have bigger guns, but not Chinese, Korean, Filipino or Malayan ass.
The same thing could happen now, with someone who was born in this country with a parent and relatives in another country. Like, say, Barack Obama, whose father lived in the U.S. for a few years but spent the rest of his life in Kenya. And Obama has extensive family in Kenya. If the natural-born provision had been eliminated and he’d lived in Kenya until age three, do you think he’d have any greater connection to Kenya than he does now?
Having a provision that keeps non-natural born Americans out of the presidency doesn’t remedy the situation, it just alters the terms slightly. To no purpose, I might add. Somebody who feels that much of an attachment to another country isn’t going to run for president.
I think the 35 years thing is an excellent suggestion, and I would support it. It is unlikely that I would vote for or support an Arnold presidency, but I do not see any reason why he should be barred from running. Being an American citizen for 35 years or more (either because you were born here over 35 years ago or because you were naturalized over 35 years ago) seems a sufficient commitment. It seems completely random and devoid of reason that someone born here to foreign parents would be eligible, but someone who moves here at two weeks with foreign parents would be ineligible.
The problem doesn’t seem to be so much the right of the person running for office as the right of citizens to vote for whomever they see as most fit. I should be allowed to vote for anyone, be it someone who’s not born in the country, or isn’t even a citizen, or is a freaking serial-killing alien from outer space. And if more than half of the votes agree with me, that is the guy who should be elected.
And more importantly, isn’t going to win a run for president. Being eligible isn’t enough to succeed with a dastardly plan to take over the United States for the benefit of a foreign power: you still need to win. Which means your anti-American past will be intensely scrutinized, and will destroy your chances if anything credible turns up. Unless of course we are talking about a comic book style conspiracy where you tempered your behavior for decades in preparation for a presidential run. If we’re living in such a Hollywood world I’m pretty sure the natural born rule won’t help you anyway - the scriptwriters can just introduce a natural born character to do your dirty work for you … 
I, for one, would welcome any freaking serial-killing alien from outer space as president/overlord.
Alien Versus Predator: Decision 2012.
I want to preface this by saying I am not an expert and that this is very much a layman’s view of things.
That being said I think understand the need and the rationale behind constitutional restrictions on who can and cannot be President. As I understand it the constitution’s purpose is as much to protect us from democracy as it is to protect democracy. The majority does not always make the right decisions and so the constitution limits what the majority can do, i.e. no matter how many people vote for it a law could not be passed that said I am not allowed to be an Atheist, or that I am not allowed to tell people that I think homeopathy is bullshit, freedom of religion and freedom of speech are restriction on democracy.
I think that the requirements for the Presidency are another form of this restriction of the majority.
If McCain isn’t natural born, then neither is my cousin, since he was born in a hospital on an army base in Germany, while my uncle was stationed over there.
Question – what if said child is born to two US citizens who are on vacation in Europe? Is that child considered “natural born?”
Alistair McCello has a good point – and I think that’s how it would probably be done. You’d have to have lived in the US for a good part of your life, not someone who just came over on the boat.
(BTW, this idea has MUCH more merit than one suggested in an article on some tea-bagger’s site. Basically, it said that citizenship shouldn’t just be automatically granted by being born here. :rolleyes: And no, they weren’t talking about illegal immigration)
TheMightyAtlas, so? That works both ways – if someone’s born here, but then at the age of say, two, his parents move to say, Japan, but he returns here in his thirties, eventually runs for president…etc.
And quite frankly, your scenario HAS happened quite frequently in Europe among royalty – WWI could be described as one big family squabble. (The Kaiser, the Tsar, and the King of Great Britain were all first cousins; you had queens who were sisters fighting on the opposite side, lots of little countries and such, etc) (And yes, people did accuse foreign born royals of divided loyalties, but it wasn’t any worse than some of the usual political crap you see nowadays)
Yes.
I love the idea of being a citizen for 35 years allows you to become eligible.
I’d prefer all citizens be eligible, period, but this would certainly be better than the current rules.
Since you cannot choose where you are born or where you spend your childhood, citizen for at least 17 years after turning 18 years old.
In addition, requiring the President not to be a citizen of any other country, so Senator McCain would have to renounce Panamanian citizenship, and (if he was eligible – I’m not sure if he is) Obama would have to renounce Kenyan citizenship.
Can you just renounce citizenship? People ask that around here sometimes and they’re usually told “you can’t.” The U.S. does not recognize dual citizenship, as I understand it, so that shouldn’t matter.
Of course it can. Hell you can have people three generations down the line and still have divided loyalties. It is just a matter of likelihood, and presumption. As a practical matter the number of natural born citizens who have parents (say) still living in other countries must be smaller than the foreign born population, because the latter pretty much supposes that the parents after being here moved back there, while the former supposes that when the child immigrates the parents do as well. It is just not the normal pattern of immigration, though with the world getting smaller there is a lot of more the divided family that retains close ties than there used to be. So when I ask “What has changes since 1789?” maybe that is the answer.
But the answer can’t be “Waaah! Its not fair!” Because it is not fair that I need to be 18 to vote, when I might be just as mature, intelligent, etc at 16 than someone else is at 25, and a lot more than someone else at 95 who can’t even remember who is President.
So if we are going to run around amending our constitution, we should prioritize. And opening up the presidency to non-native born I would think is way down the list.
Well it certainly wasn’t a good thing was it? Having royals interfering in the political process because they were related to royals on the other side?
As I have said before, the world has (figuratively) become smaller, and in some way that does change the equation. But hardly to the extent that this represents some kind of compelling issue that we need to act on.
In other words, you think that the issue of divided family ties is a significant issue, but the fact that Britain is no longer in position to annex the colonies and the sea changes in global travel are not significant changes? Ok.
What a persuasive counterargument!
That’s not particularly fair, but I think it’s better than the alternatives. (For the record I support lowering the voting age.)
What, in your opinion, is a priority? And be forewarned that whatever you say is probably going to be met with “Waaah! It’s not fair!” 