Assignment #4 Another Stab at the Constitution

Nieves Micolta

Class: POL 166

Professor: Barry Murdaco

Lehman College

Another Stab at the Constitution

     Akhil Reed Amar, teaches law an political science at Yale University. Also author of the forthcoming. refer to the limitations on naturalized citizens for holding office, specifically the president. The constitution states that only citizens born in the U.S.,

but those American citizens who happen to have been born abroad to non-American parents and who later choose to become “naturalized”American citizens are not the full legal equals of those of us born in the U.S. true, naturalized Americans have always been allowed to serve as cabinet secretaries, supreme Court justices, Senators and governors. And at the founding, anyone already a citizen could be president,regardless of birthplace.(Alexander Hamilton, for example, though born in the West Indies, was fully eligible to serve as president under the Constitution he himself helped draft). But modern-day naturalized citizens are barred from the presidency simply because they were born in the wrong place to the wrong parents.  

     Bourne and Chesterton would not be in favor of this restriction because as they mention in their articles, we are all foreign-born or the descendants of foreign-born, and not distinctions should be made between us and this country made of immigrants. I think that this restriction is unfair because if a person become a “naturalized” American citizen can serve the army, work for governmental entities, why they can be consider and treated as equal as a natural-born citizen, because as mention in the constitution all citizens have the same rights, so being a president should be one them.  

     I chose the article because I believe that everybody should be treated equal with not exceptions. Moreover, this country was form and constructed by men and women from others countries and after 300 years later this country still receiving immigrants that came to get new opportunities. Some immigrants lived in this country since they were a child and those are the people that should have the right to become a president. They know U.S. culture and will be perform the presidential role as well as a natural born citizen.