Hey guys, it's Allison.
At the end of class today, we began discussing whether or not Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution should be upheld. Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the US Constitution states that, No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.
At the end of the period, one explanation for this rule was offered; it was said that foreign-born individuals should not be eligible for the presidency because they will maintain an unfair bias towards the country of their birth, and that such a bias would affect the decisions made during their term. I don't think this is necessarily true. The individual would obviously have sufficient reason to move to the U.S. Whether he or she felt unsafe, discriminated against, or that better opportunities awaited them in America, they left their native country for a good reason. If they disliked the way they were being treated by the government or by the society of the native country, they obviously wouldn't hold a bias in favor of the native country when making important decisions. Even if they left their native country simply because they sought better opportunities in the U.S., they would most likely feel more closely tied to America than to their native country. So their decision making wouldn't have much bias.
What do you guys think about the prospect of foreign-born presidents? Does it really make a difference? After all, aren't we the "Nation of Immigrants"?
2 comments:
Hey, it's Jasmine.
Steph said yesterday that people who are born in foreign countries have a special place in their heart for their homeland, which might cause them to favor certain countries over others (in terms of foreign policy, etc.). I'd definitely have to disagree with her statement. I agree with Allison--foreign-born citizens aren't necessarily more biased than natural-born ones. Say someone moved to the U.S. from Iran when she was only 2 months old, and her family never went back to visit Iran. Another girl's parents are Iranian, but she was born in America. Her family returns to Iran every summer to visit relatives. So isn't it possible that the natural-born citizen has more bias than the foreign-born one?
I don't think the possibility of being biased is a good justification for why we should uphold the Constitution. My parents were immigrants--they grew up in Taiwan. That doesn't make me any less American than anyone else. But some people still might claim that I'm biased, and I probably am (in terms of the Taiwan-China issue). I think that everybody, in some way, is biased. After all, we all have unique life experiences that make us think the way we do.
I can see why the natural-born citizen requirement is in place--I understand why people don't want someone who was raised in a completely different country for 30 years to lead our country. I just don't think it's right to exclude the American citizens that have lived here for practically their whole lives, but can't become President because they were born abroad. What do you guys think? Do you think we should amend the Constitution? Or do you think we should leave it as it is? If we did amend it, where would we draw the line? Even if we said, "People who moved to the U.S. by age 1 are eligible to run for President," who are we to say that a person who moved here when he was one is more "American" than someone who immigrated when he was one-and-a-half?
This section of the Constitution is rather controversial - and hypocritical. Our first seven presidents weren't even natural born citizens! (Martin Van Buren, the 8th president, was the first American-born president. Just a useless bit of info for all you history buffs out there.) Technically, it would be very difficult to amend this section or any section of the constitution, because the amendment process is so difficult. (And let's face it, Congress has bigger issues to deal with first.) Despite, I don't see any reason why this section should remain in the Constitution. It's a very antiquated rule. The founding fathers probably wrote this to ensure that a future foreign-born president would have no inherit biases in favor of his/her home country, but I also believe that they wanted a president who was familiar with the American culture. In the past, if a person born in say, Russia, and lived there for 30 years, then moved to the US and ran for president and won, they would not have had enough time to become familiar with the American lifestyle and that could potentially negatively impact his/her ability to govern the country. We may be a nation of immigrants with all different cultures and backgrounds, but we do have a certain culture that is distinct from most others. However, this concern of the founding fathers is not relevant today. In our modern world where information is easily and readily accessible, and communication is on a massive scale, almost all educated people are at least somewhat familiar with other world cultures.
US Representatives need only be a citizen for seven years, and Senators need only be citizens for nine years. Congress arguably has as much if not more power than the president, because Congress is responsible for writing and ultimately passing legislation that effects the entire country. If we permit our legislators to be foreign-born, why not our president?
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