The Newsmagazine of the North Carolina Center for Voter Education | Thursday March 11, 2010

Birthplace and the Presidency
Should the Constitution be amended to allow foreign-born citizens to run for the White House?

By Bryan Warner
Published: Jan. 11, 2010

RALEIGH - He may appear on our $10 bill, but Alexander Hamilton was constitutionally ineligible to run for president.

Although he was a charter member of the Founding Fathers and the nation’s first treasury secretary, Hamilton was not born in one of the 13 original colonies-turned-states, but rather on an isle in the British West Indies.  As such, he was disqualified from serving as commander in chief of a young nation very much suspicious of foreign powers meddling in its affairs.

The Founders were so haunted by the specter of a rich and powerful European aristocrat coming to America to usurp the reins of governance that they explicitly stated in the Constitution that only those born on U.S. soil could ever be president.

The 2008 presidential election gave new life to the question of birth and the right to serve in the Oval Office. Some questioned whether Sen. John McCain was eligible for the presidency, given that he was born in Panama while his father was stationed there with the U.S. Navy.  (A Senate resolution passed in 2008 affirmed that McCain was a natural-born citizen.)

And then there was the question of Sen. Barack Obama’s place of birth, a favorite topic among some in the Blogosphere.  While the Obama campaign produced a birth certificate proving his Hawaiian birth and thus his natural-born citizenship, some so-called “birthers” continue to dispute his birthplace and by extension his right to serve as president.

McCain and Obama were not the first presidential contenders to have their natural-born status called into question.  In the election of 1880, rumors circulated that Vermont native Chester Arthur had been born in Canada.  Michigan Gov. George Romney, a Republican candidate in 1968, faced questions over his birth in Mexico to parents who were U.S. citizens.  Some disputed the eligibility of 1964 Republican nominee Sen. Barry Goldwater because he was born in the Arizona territory before it became a state.

The issue of birthplace and the presidency raises the question: Should it really matter?

Over 200 years and countless immigration waves since its creation, is it time to amend the Constitution to allow foreign-born Americans to run for president?  It seems unlikely that the Founders’ concern about some wealthy German prince waltzing into the White House will be realized anytime soon.

There is no such natural-born requirement to serve in Congress or even on the U.S. Supreme Court -- an arguably more powerful position given a justice’s lifetime appointment.  And there have been scores of foreign-born citizens who have risen to the highest ranks of government, with former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright notable among them.

Amendments addressing the foreign-born restriction have popped up and fizzled out in Congress about two dozen times.  In 2003, Republican Sen. Orin Hatch of Utah introduced a constitutional amendment that would have rescinded the two-century-old clause and paved the way for foreign-born, naturalized U.S. citizens to have a path to the White House.

In Hatch’s “Equal Right to Govern Amendment,” foreign-born citizens would have to wait 20 years after being naturalized in order to become president.  (California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a native of Austria, became a citizen in 1983.) 

Amending the Constitution for any reason is a substantial challenge. It would require passage by a two-thirds majority in both chambers of Congress.  Even after surviving that test, it would still have to win approval from three-fourths of the states -- 38 of the 50. That high hurdle, combined with the fact of immigration proving a perennially controversial issue and the Obama administration having dealt with questions about his birthplace, means that no such amendment is likely to gain traction in the near term.

The natural-born clause may have made sense in the primordial days of a Republic insulating itself against the influence of much more potent European powers.  But today, as the nation stands as a colossus, the world’s sole superpower, such xenophobic insecurity appears outmoded.

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who was born in Canada and moved to the U.S. when she was four, expressed the frustration felt by many foreign-born Americans when she said, "You can't choose where you are born, but you can choose where you live and where you swear your allegiance."

Indeed, in a nation that takes pride in an American dream made available to all, it seems strange that no matter how much blood, sweat or tears they shed for their adoptive home, for foreign-born citizens that dream ends at the White House gates.