The Constitution should be amended to remove the requirement that the president must have been born in the U.S. and it should require him or her to have served at least four years in a branch of our armed forces
BarkGrowlBite | June 2, 2016
Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution reads:
No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty-five years, and been fourteen years a resident within the United States.
Wednesday morning’s NBC Today show featured 11-year-old Alena Mulhern of Kingston, Massachusetts who is running for president in 2040. There is only one problem … right now even if she were 35 years of age, she would still not be eligible to become President of the United States because she was born in China.
Alena was adopted by the Mulhern family when she was 10-months-old and has been a resident of the U.S. ever since. It seems awfully ridiculous that Alena, who has lived in this country her whole life since she was a 10-momth-old infant, is ineligible to become our President.
Alena’s mother had told her that in this country she could be anything she wanted to be. When Alena said she wanted to be president, her mother told her, “Honey, that's the only thing you can't be.”
Last November, Alena appeared before the Massachusetts legislature and asked the lawmakers to pass a resolution urging Congress to make U.S. citizens who were not born on American soil eligible to become president. She told the lawmakers: “Just think of all the great candidates that would not be able to serve our country because of a law that came into existence over 200 years ago.”
I couldn’t agree more with Alena.
No matter what Californians thought of him as their two-term governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger is ineligible to become president because he was born in Austria. A two-term governor of California is not qualified to be president? How absurd!
Henry Kissinger, one of America’s greatest statesmen, cannot become president because he was born in Germany. A man who served two presidents as National Security Adviser and Secretary of State is not qualified to be president? Incredible!
Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright was born in Czechoslovakia. Oregon Governor Kate Brown was born in Spain. Jorge Labarga, Chief Justice of the Florida Supreme Court, was born in Cuba. Former U.S. Congressman from Louisiana, Joseph Cao, was born in Vietnam. None of these outstanding Americans, including Alena Mulhern, is qualified to become president. Come on give me a break.
In addition to amending the Constitution to eliminate the requirement that the president be born on American soil, I believe it should be a requirement that the president have served at least four years in a branch of our armed forces. Since the President is Commander-in-Chief, I think it is extremely important for him or her to have had some military experience.
It is important to note that the “natural born citizen” requirement was placed in the Constitution only because the founding fathers did not want a British Monarchy loyalist to become president. The fear that a president loyal to the British Monarchy would return this country back to an English colony has long, long since passed.
I would like to see Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution read:
No person except a citizen of the United States shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have served honorably for four years in the armed forces, who shall not have attained to the age of thirty-five years, and been fourteen years a resident within the United States.
Although I won’t be alive by then, it would be great to see Alena running for president in 2040.
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