Amend Constitution to allow foreign born presidents?

I don't really have a valid reason for this but - NOPE!

no

No...I'm, sure that Hitlers grandson is in Argentina waiting to move here........compliments of the current adnminstrations long term plan division.......

No, absolutely not.

No, BBB, you can't really have nimh for president.

No- Naturalized Americans can and do aspire to high office........but I believe that the Presidency should be open only to native born citizens!

Why not, many would have us subordinate our sovereignty to foreign born leaders of the UN.

The discussion I heard on NPR today convinced me that we should take the possibility seriously. So many of our best people are recent immigrants. Contrast with the latter-day drop of Mayflower semen represented by George Bush. How much worse could we do?

I'm in earnest here -- we're asking ourselves this question at the nadir of American history. It should be discussed (before being decided upon) over a generous period of time, a series of Congresses, not just by one which is heavily biased. Keep in mind that we still haven't experienced anything but white males in the presidency, white, native born, almost entirely anglo males. At least other democracies have had distinguished female leaders...

Why not? We're already exporting most of all the other jobs in America, why not this one too?

That's a great signature quote, Butrfly. Very apt!

Now here's something kind of neat -- not a foreign-born president (yet!) but an electronic voting system set up to record votes, world-wide, for the next US presidential election. You're a citizen of Botswana? Denmark? New Zealand? Go ahead. Cast your vote! EVEN AMERICANS CAN VOTE!

http://www.theworldvotes.org/

That's quite an interesting question to ponder, Tartarin. If people around the world were allowed to nominate and vote for a U.S. Presidential candidate from anywhere around the world, I wonder which leaders would be nominated and what their platforms would be and why it is thought that they'd do any better of a job then a natural born citizen of the U.S.

Why should a person born here be the best person to hold the office of president solely on the basis of his/her birthright?

All one has to do is look at the current president and realize we have certainly not chosen the best candidate available. We all abdicated our birthrights by allowing the Supreme Court to choose our current chief executive.

History will judge the appointment of Dubya as a major disaster.

Yes, but only in the case of an American by birth born overseas. A business trip by one's parents should not preclude presidency. The rule was before travel was such that somone could be born on a weekend trip across the world.

I don't see many reasons for denying foreign presidents but especially not Americans by birth who were simply born overseas.

Of couse I must admit to a bias, I want to be president and this rule is ruining my whole political career.

Yes, ruling by birthright was one of the main reason the United States bonded together to fight England.

There should however be a minimum requirement to become a US President maybe something like 20 years residency.

I think something like residency is a much better criteria for modern times.

Consider this scenario.

An American couple are vacationing or travelling for whatever reason and they give birth abroad in a nation that does not cede citizenship based upon birth location (Around the world there seem to be two lines of thinking when it comes to nationality, some are territorial and some are bloodliners. Some peoples think that the location of birth is paramound while others consider nationality of the parents as the criteria).

So the child is born abroad but returns stateside and never holds a foreign nationality.

To me, disqualifying this person is not the spirit of the law. People in this type of situation are rare, I get shortchanged all the time for travel related issues. But this is becoming more common and I'd like to see the modernization of cociety addressed with the modernization of that law.

Even if one is opposed to having people who hold or held foreign nationality be president they'd be hardpressed to come up with any justification for denying the chances to an "apple pie" American who happened to be born overseas.

I agree with you Craven on that point.

I would like to know how would you feel about Mexicans crossing the border to give birth so that the Child becomes an American citizen and returns to Mexico to raise him/her. They do this a lot in California to guarantee the child a chance for a better life in the future. Can this child be our next US president?

Yes, and I guess I have to go with bloodlines. One of my sticking points with our 14th amendment is the provision that anyone born in the US is given citizenship. The notion was intended to confer citizenship on all former slaves and their children immediately following the War of Yankee Agression, and nothing else.

By law yes. This is why I think territorial criteria for nationality epitomizes the most primordial aspect of nationality and things like that underscore just how outdated some of the notions are.

Cultural identity is much more important than place of birth and now that place of birth has less and less to do with cultural identity IMO it should be addessed by a modernization of the law.

The law exists to prevent a bit of a paranoid fear of having a president whose loyalties lie elsewhere. But place of birth was always a bad measuring stick for loyalty and it's even a worse one now that contagion is becoming more of a factor.

IMO residency is a far better criteria for cultural identity. I say that without bias because I'd still not get to be president. :-(