If I recall my college government classes, the 14th Amendment does not overrule the requirement that a presidential candidate be a “natural born citizen.” The potential prez must be born either on American soil, or otherwise on American territory. (like, say, in an American Embassy somewhere) And then, of course, he must remain an American citizen. Despite what Demolition Man told you, Arnold Schwartzeneigger cannot be prez without another Constitutional Amedment.
So, your first-generation ExtraTerrestrial-American could not be President, as he\she\it is not a natural-born citizen. However, if our happy immigrant brought along its familiy equivilent, and however many of them contrived to produce a batch of second-generation ExtraTerrestrial-Americans, then they would be eligble. Except for that sticky “person” bit. How THAT one would be resolved under the strict letter of the law, I’m not sure. My non-lawyerly interpretation would be, since most of the language of the constitution refers to The People in governmental terms of the citizens of the country (as opposed to this person, that person, etc), if the 2nd-Gen ETAs were classified as citizens, they’d be eligible. However, it’d probably be left up to the Supreme Court in the end - some bigots just wouldn’t be comfortable with something citinous and slimy in the White House, even though I really don’t see how that’d be much of a change from recent years.
These interesting comments refer to Cecil’s recent article Could a member of an extraterrestrial species be U.S. president?
Welcome to the Boards, jayblalock. It helps to post a link to the article you’re commenting on. You just copy the little address thingy in that little window, and then use the swell hyperlink feature of the snappy new Straight Dope message Boards. Easy!
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Redboss
There was a long thread in GD which exactly parallelled this one, as to how, as a lawyer, one would go about getting human rights for an android client recently. Frustratingly, it was sometime after 7 December and before today. So you can’t look at it. Bit of a pointless post, this one, isn’t it really? Sorry.
Or be born to a parent who is him/herself previously an American citizen and remains so in good standing, regardless of the place of birth – the common assumption being that the intent is that the person have been an American citizen by birth. The point being that future presidential hopefuls (once they ran out of Founding Fathers) would have no prior bond of allegiance to a foreign land, nor any foreign government be legally able to claim him/her as their subject.
It would definitely end up hingeing on SCotUS’ deciding what, federally, is a “person” and whether that person is “natural born” AND a “citizen.” (I know under my State Civil Code, a “natural person” is “a human being, who is alive separated from the maternal womb”.)