Anna Quindlen: Let's Allow Immigrants to Become President
... Our attitude toward immigrants is paradoxical. As Roger Daniels writes in his history "Guarding the Golden Door," most Americans find themselves "on the one hand reveling in the nation's immigrant past and on the other rejecting much of its immigrant present." They also find themselves reviling illegal immigration and yet benefiting from its underground work culture, the jobs that need doing that we don't want to do ourselves.
But there's one potentially dirty job that new arrivals to our soil can never fill, and that's the presidency. The Constitution says that only "a natural-born citizen" can hold the position. It's a vestige of the Founders' fears that some errant Pole or Brit would slither into the highest office and turn us into an adjunct of Europe again. Those times are long past. And at a juncture when it has become harder and harder to persuade young people to enter politics, when affluent white men scarcely seem the ideal standard-bearers for a polyglot population and when 12 percent of the country's people are originally from elsewhere, the notion of limiting the presidency only to those born here has become a codified backwater of prejudice.
Of course, it's not easy amending the Constitution. It's happened only 17 times since 1791, probably because it requires two-thirds majorities in both houses of Congress as well as ratification by at least three quarters of the states. And this particular amendment requires a groundswell of sentiment that new-minted Americans are just as good as the rest of us, which may be why it's been doomed many times over our history.
Modern efforts have usually been tied to some particular individual. But suggesting that the Constitution should be amended so Austrian-born Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger or Canadian-born Gov. Jennifer Granholm can run for president isn't the way to go. Good policy isn't made one boldface name at a time. Stem-cell research, for instance, should be supported because of its benefits for everyone, not because Ronald Reagan had Alzheimer's.
On the other hand, it helps to give a face to an issue. And this one has millions, the faces of kids in public-school classrooms, kids from El Salvador, Pakistan, Bosnia, beginning the journey of education and attachment that our great-grandparents made. ...
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But there's one potentially dirty job that new arrivals to our soil can never fill, and that's the presidency. The Constitution says that only "a natural-born citizen" can hold the position. It's a vestige of the Founders' fears that some errant Pole or Brit would slither into the highest office and turn us into an adjunct of Europe again. Those times are long past. And at a juncture when it has become harder and harder to persuade young people to enter politics, when affluent white men scarcely seem the ideal standard-bearers for a polyglot population and when 12 percent of the country's people are originally from elsewhere, the notion of limiting the presidency only to those born here has become a codified backwater of prejudice.
Of course, it's not easy amending the Constitution. It's happened only 17 times since 1791, probably because it requires two-thirds majorities in both houses of Congress as well as ratification by at least three quarters of the states. And this particular amendment requires a groundswell of sentiment that new-minted Americans are just as good as the rest of us, which may be why it's been doomed many times over our history.
Modern efforts have usually been tied to some particular individual. But suggesting that the Constitution should be amended so Austrian-born Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger or Canadian-born Gov. Jennifer Granholm can run for president isn't the way to go. Good policy isn't made one boldface name at a time. Stem-cell research, for instance, should be supported because of its benefits for everyone, not because Ronald Reagan had Alzheimer's.
On the other hand, it helps to give a face to an issue. And this one has millions, the faces of kids in public-school classrooms, kids from El Salvador, Pakistan, Bosnia, beginning the journey of education and attachment that our great-grandparents made. ...