Talk Elections

Equal Opportunity to Govern Amendment

The Equal Opportunity to Govern Amendment is a Constitutional Amendment proposed in July 2003 by US Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) to repeal the nativist clause prohibiting foreign-born individuals from holding the office of President or Vice President of the United States. Hatch's amendment would allow anyone who has been a US citizen for twenty years to seek these offices. In the wake of the California recall election of 2003, this proposal is widely seen as an attempt to make California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger eligible for the presidency. The text of the amendment reads as follows:

    Section 1. A person who is a citizen of the United States, who has been for 20 years a citizen of the United States, and who is otherwise eligible to the Office of President , is not ineligible to that Office by reason of not being a native born citizen of the United States.

    Section 2. This article shall not take effect unless it has been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States not later than 7 years from the date of its submission to the States by the Congress.

Pretty horrible.

Might I ask why you feel so?

I feel that any citizen (regardless of the time spent as such) should be able to be President. (Exceptions, of course, apply on the basis of age, residency, and the like.)

This is the chief conductor of foreign policy. A natural-born citizen is less likely to sell us out to the United Nations or some similar international outfit.

IMHO for the highest office in the land we want someone who is absolutely loyal to the US. Someone who was born here and grew up here, is more likely to meet that requirement. There are plenty of citizens who were born here to choose from. Why expand it to others? Being the president is not a right. Not everyone can be the president.

The requirement has been in the constitution since it was written. Lets leave it there.

I don't think that this is too much of a concern. Our natural-born Presidents have in some cases done worse.

Because the People might find better candidates among those others.

the US voting public should be able to decide who is fit to be president or not.  If they felt a non-natural born citizen unfit to be president, he wouldn't get voted in.

There ought to be some limits. A non-citizen, for example, should not be eligible.

agreed, but the proposed amendment does not allow them too.  Although I very much doubt a non-citizen could win.

I'm against it.  There are plenty naturally born US citizens within the US to run for President.  We don't need to whore out our country to some foreign born candidate just because he's an actor or has billions of dollars.

Maybe we should do what the Iranians do; there should be an religious committee choosing which candidates can run for president.

That argument does not appear to be logically valid. By analogy, someone in the nineteenth century could have argued that there were plenty of males to run for office, and that females should therefore be excluded.

One group should not be prevented from running simply because there are a lot of people in another group.

I strongly support it and I'm surprised that Hatch has done something right for once.

This would be like me saying that there are plenty of males to vote so we don't need to give women the right to vote.  The point of giving equal rights to naturalized citizens is not to have more people available to run, but to give them equal rights.

There are plenty of reasons why Arnold shouldn't be president.  His nationality should not be one of them.

Most of the time Sen. Hatch and I agree on nothing.  This is not an exception.  Why should we even want a foreign-born president?  I'd honestly feel much more comfortable with a naturally born citizen. 

No, not really.  We are talking about national leadership.  It's not like we are running low on people who have the ability to be our leader (though we are running low on candidates worth being our leader lately).  By that, we do not need to whore ourselves out to non-native born citizens for elections.  And this has nothing to do with equal rights and everything to do with national security.  Any plan that is brought up to change that fact should be struck down instantly. 

Once again, this is not a valid argument. It's like saying, it's not like we are running low on white Christian males who have the ability to be our leader, so no one else should qualify. The number of people available is absolutely irrelevant.

That argument is a rather difficult one to make. Why would a natural-born citizen be more likely to maintain national security than, say, someone who became a citizen at the age of one?

The argument that naturalized citizens are somehow less likely to owe allegiance to the United States is, I'm sorry to say, entirely unconvincing.

You don't seem to get what MODU is saying. He's saying a non- native born president is undesirable because of national security purposes.

However, it could perhaps still be justified if there were a particular need for it. MODU is simply pointing out that this isn't that case.

No, it's not.  They are two different things.  There is a reason why our laws require the leader of the nation to be one born from this nation, just as there is a reason why they have to be a certain age too.  It is to protect the integrity and sovereignty of our country.  Now, if for some reason all of our adults were to die suddenly, leaving only kids behind, then the law would have to be changed to either lower the age limit or to open it up to foreign born adults to become our leader.



Yet you assume that everyone who becomes a naturalized citizen might not have other motives.  Let's say for example a 19-year-old covert PLO operative moved to the US and became naturalized, and then when old enough ran and became President?  Do you not think that he would have any plans towards changing our support for Isreal?  Or what about a German immigrant following WWI moving to the US to become President during WWII?  These are the things you have to think about, and why changing the law to allow this kind of risk to occur is a very very bad idea.

That argument, too, I understand, but disagree with. I simply feel that a natural-born citizen is no less likely to betray national security than a naturalized one.

The probability of that occurring is most likely about the same as the probability of a natural-born citizen betraying the U.S. This might be especially likely, using your logic, for natural-born children of immigrants.

Why are some people so gung-ho about a foreign-born president anyway?

It's not a question of what we want at this time, but a question of not unduly restricting the choices of the People.