Life would be so much simpler if we just passed a damn Amendment requiring that all federal offices required you to have been a US citizen prior to being 18 and not a felon and to renounce citizenship to any other country or state that said dual citizenship was in your opinion secondary too your loyalty to Uncle Sam.
Stupid fucking rule anyway, and every conversation about it is always stupid.
Proper Qualification for public office: Was legally elected by the plurality of the constituents.
If people want to elect someone who immigrated here when they were 17 and spent 3 years in jail for stealing a car but had their "Come to Jesus" moment (Jesus, incidentally, not eligible to be President) then let them fucking well elect him. Shit, if they can get half the voters to approve of them as Supreme Commander in spite of being an immigrant ex-con that's all I need.
It does not ensure the national allegiance of a countrys leaders aer first and foremost to it, but definitely helps. The problems start when people (most with little to no legal or government education) start parsing "citizenship by birth" to mean wtf they want.
The worst part of that is not who holds the presidency, but how greatly and badly it can screw up childrens lives. After reading the articles on Cruz I need to call the State Dept. to see if my childrens US citizenship REQUIRES notifiying them at time of birth, or if it is automatic since I am American and lived there >10 years, at least 5 after age 14. If the answer is "yes," I—and my child—have a problem:
Norway prohibits dual citizenship except in extreme cases (basically, when renouncing foreign citizenship would cost a kings ransom and/or return to a country that would summarily execute the would-be Norwegian citizen.) Until 2005 they exempted anyone <18, but now the law says a parents application for their childs foreign citizenship immediately and automatically invalidates the childs Norwegian citizenship. So officially recording my children as "natural born US citizens" might make them illegal aliens 90 days after birth: They would be US citizens in Norway with no visa.
Occasionally something comes along to remind me US immigration law is fairly loose by comparison to even most Western nations. This is such a case.
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