October 6, 2004
It was not so long ago that even Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger seemed improbable. A recall effort took care of that, and now Congress is examining in earnest how the Austrian-born Republican governor of California and any other naturalized American could rise to the highest office in the land.
More than a year after lawmakers in the House and Senate proposed a constitutional amendment to allow citizens born outside the United States to serve as president, the Senate Judiciary Committee gave the issue new momentum on Tuesday with a hearing that sought expert testimony on the future of the constitutional restriction.
"It is time for us - the elected representatives of this nation of immigrants - to begin the process that can result in removing this artificial, outdated, unnecessary and unfair barrier," Senator Orrin Hatch, the committee chairman, said of Article II, Section 1, Claus 5 of the Constitution, which sets forth eligibility requirements for serving as president.
Hatch presided over a lively but mostly one-sided discussion that included testimony from four lawmakers who have co-sponsored measures proposing a constitutional amendment and two academics who generally favor the concept despite its low probability of success. Successful amendment of the Constitution requires approval by two-thirds votes in the House and Senate and by three-quarters of the 50 states.
A fifth lawmaker, Senator Don Nickles, Republican of Oklahoma, said he favored changes through legislation, an idea that appealed to Matthew Spalding of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research organization, who said any change should not take effect "for 10 years or so, when the current candidates are not on the scene."
Much of the dialogue at the hearing sought to infer the motives of the Founding Fathers when they limited the presidency to those who were citizens at the time of the Constitution's adoption and to native-borns thereafter.
Alexander Hamilton's name came up more often than Arnold Schwarzenegger's, but unlike Hamilton, who was born in the West Indes, Schwarzenegger had a backer in the audience, a woman who gave out buttons, T-shirts and bumper stickers that said, "Amend for Arnold."
Governor Jennifer Granholm of Michigan, whose family moved to California from Canada in 1963, when she was 4, had no such material support at the hearing. But she and Schwarzenegger, who emigrated from Austria in 1968 as a 21-year-old bodybuilder, agree that people like them should be afforded the same Constitutional rights as native Americans.
"You can't choose where you are born, but you can choose where you live and where you swear your allegiance," Granholm said through a press aide. "If the concern is about loyalty to America, which it is, then a requirement that a naturalized citizen has lived in this country for 25 or more years should alleviate that concern."
Granholm stressed, "This is not about me, I have no interest, not a whit," in running for president.
That is not necessarily true of Schwarzenegger. Appearing last February on Meet the Press, Schwarzenegger said a constitutional amendment clearing the way for naturalized citizens to serve as president would be "really good."
"I think that, you know, times have changed," he said. "I think this is now a much more global economy. I think there's so many people here in this country that are now from overseas, that are immigrants, that are doing such a terrific job with the work, bringing businesses here and all this, that there's no reason why not."
An aide to Schwarzenegger said he was too busy governing to update his views.
Most of the hearing witnesses disagreed on a number of details, including the length of time a newly naturalized citizen should wait before eligibility. Three House members who introduced a proposal last year - Representative Vic Snyder, Democrat of Arkansas; Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California; and Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts - said they favored 35 years.
Representative Dana Rohrabacher, Republican of California who introduced a measure this year that mirrors Hatch's 2003 resolution, argued for 20 years.
Frank seemed to change his mind on the waiting period, arguing that the natural course of election campaigns would weed out the kind of candidates the Founders feared - European elitists with a scheming eye toward the seat of power in America.
"Trust the voters," Frank said, calling the constitutional restriction "invidious discrimination."
"The fewer years, the better, as far as I'm concerned," he said. "An hour and a half should be enough time."
The academics, Akhil Amar of Yale Law School and John Yinger of Syracuse University, agreed that the Founders had acted within the context of their times to make elected office open to all, restricting only the presidency over fears of foreign influence.
http://www.iht.com/articles/542212.html