Allow foreign-born presidents
Adding a 28th Amendment to the Constitution to allow foreign-born citizens to run for president isn’t about him, though this news could come as a surprise to the California governor. One look at those worshipful “Amend for Arnold’ commercials and “Operation Arnold’ Web sites, and even the most humble megalomaniac might imagine himself a savior for whom a grateful nation will move heaven and Earth to secure the benefit of his leadership.
We are, nonetheless, in Schwarzenegger’s debt. His supporters are the catalysts for a long-overdue debate about a law that, at best, has outgrown whatever purpose it might have served and, at worst, contradicts the very values on which the Constitution is based.
Article II, Section 1, clause 5 stipulates that “no person except a natural born citizen’ can serve as president. In 1787, this made at least some sense. A foreigner might steer the country back into the hands of England or try to reshape the U.S. government to resemble the monarchy of his homeland.
But America today is large enough and heterogeneous enough to quell fears that one ethnicity, religious denomination or foreign sect could sweep a presidential candidate into office for the purpose of weakening or undermining the country.
Constitutional purists like William Van Alstyne, a constitutional law expert and a professor at William and Mary Law School, resist any tampering with the document, which goes a long way in explaining why of the 11,000 or so proposed amendments in the past 200 years, just 27 have won approval of two-thirds of the House and Senate and three-fourths of the state legislatures. The barrier to passage is high, as it should be.
We ought to change the natural-born citizen law on this single argument — that the United States has evolved and grown enough to abandon the notion that foreign-born citizens would not be 100 percent loyal to the country. But perhaps the stronger argument is that the law runs counter not only to what America was meant to be but also what we know it to be.
This has always been a country where the circumstances of one’s birth meant nothing compared to the quality of one’s accomplishments. The founding fathers’ rejection of titles born of pedigree is an example of this belief. Our investment in public school is another. We believe all people can succeed whether they emerge from a tenement or a manor house, from parents who are surgeons or street cleaners.
Similarly, we have been a country in which people from foreign shores have found their fortunes here, some arriving with trunks of heirlooms, some with just their wits and a willingness to work. And what cannot be denied is how fundamentally their contributions have shaped and strengthened this country, even now.
Thus, a survivor of Nazis in Hungary could come here at 18 and end up helping to found the high-tech corporation, Intel. A girl from Prague and a boy from Germany could grow up to become secretary of state. A young man from Austria with ambitions as outsized as his muscles can become a Hollywood star and governor of California.
Immigrants run banks and factories, decide court cases, teach at our universities, serve as commanders in our military. Why would we stop the pursuit of the American dream at the steps of the White House? Why would we deprive ourselves of the widest possible array of presidential candidates?
Perhaps Schwarzenegger will be the first beneficiary of changing the law, which, with popular support, could happen in as little as two or three years. Perhaps the first beneficiary will be Jennifer Granholm, Michigan’s Democratic governor who was born in Vancouver.
Such considerations are beside the point. The law should be changed because America has outgrown not only the provision’s purpose but its principle.
Joan Ryan is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Send comments to her in care of this newspaper or send her e-mail at [email protected].