Burnt Orange Report

What is it with Libs and facts?? Hamilton was born in the West Indies on the island of Nevis.

RL, I have to admit, is correct.

On top of that, the US Constitution did not prohibit Hamilton from becoming president.

From Article II, Section 1
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 the President;

All indications are that Hamilton was a citizen in the late 1780s when George Washington appointed him to the cabinet.

But this is all moot because the amendment just won't pass. Democrats who don't want to do der Ahnold any favors and anti-immigration Republicans will unite to defeat it.

agreed.

Yeah, I don't have any particular objection to an amendment on this. I think the clause in question is outdated, especially for people who are the children of Americans living abroad - heck, I almost wasn't born in the US. I was born six weeks early, and if I had been born two weeks earlier than I was - I would have been born in London where my parents lived for three months while my mother was pregnant. But... it's a moot point.

It won't ever happen - same with changing the electoral college, although I'd say changing the electoral college is more likely - because I think we'll see a move in the next decade for states to change allocation of electors for partisan purposes (ie. Colorado) to the extent that within a decade, my bet is that state laws regarding the electoral college will be a mess. But only if it becomes a compete mess will there ever be a move to change the system.

The fear when Article II, Section 1 was written was that someone who was British, French, German, or some other nationality by birth would have divided loyalties. This would be especially evident if the U.S. went to war with the President's country of birth. The world in the 1780's was far less mobile and much more xenophobic than today.

My mother is a naturalised citizen. She met the residency requirements and studied long and hard to get her citizenship. Most of her co-workers who were American by birth could not even answer the questions she had to. She is one of the most loyal Americans I know.

I agree that the rule is outdated, but it is not going to change. Although we are less xenophobic than we were in the 1780's, many people do not want to see a "foreigner" become President of the U.S.

Byron,

A person born to American citizens while overseas is born a U.S. citizen and is eligble to run for presidency. You can be born a US citizen without being born on US soil.

On the contrary, in the debate over Article II, Section 1, Alexander Hamilton wrote, "desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union?" We saw evidence of this in Japan's strong monetary investments in businesses and land in the USA in the 1980s and China's spying in the 1990s. In the world after 9/11, it's entirely conceivable that a foreign nation would attempt to gain power over and in the USA.

Back in the 1700s when that was included in the Constitution with very little debate, the framers remembered the division of parts of Poland into neighboring countries when a foreigner was elected to premiership.

Another reason it's imperative to be sure that the President is an American is that his first loyalty must be to this country in case of war. His education and his culture must also be American; we are unique in the world and only an American can understand that uniqueness.