I'm really glad we all live in a world where nobody lies to gain position, or no foreign enemy has ever tried to infiltrate their operatives into key positions by becoming double agents and renouncing anything
I mean, it might be meant as a defensive, sure. But is it any better than excluding women or left-handers?
The reservoir of potential candidates is vast. The risk this mitigates seems important enough to give up on additional potential candidates.
It's not like other countries aren't protective. Have you looked at trying to even just immigrate to Japan?
Regardless of how you feel, a country should be able to set its own policies.
Quite a big deal when JFK was the first. Look it up.
> Have you looked at trying to even just immigrate to Japan?
Ignoring that the Japanese economy is currently weaker than the US economy (which affects your chances of getting an offer in both places as a foreigner), in terms of paperwork and bureaucracy, Japan is much easier to get (and keep) a skilled work visa compared to the US. If you are not looking for a skilled work visa, there is a long term tourist visa (6mo+6mo) that is also easy to get, but you need to have about 200K EUR in liquid assets. Again, the US doesn't have anything as low friction.
And in a democracy that means that voters should be able to set the policies.
Voters can already resolve by themselves to vote only for people who are native born, or who are of a certain age, or under a certain age, or who like the right football team, or have the right haircolour.
We don't need to further restrict who voters can and can not vote for.
Unless you don't trust voters. But then, why have a democracy in the first place?
America was founded as a colony fleeing its imperial oppressor. The fact that the rules are so strong here is a testament to the bloody and deep scars we gained from overthrowing our foreign oppressors.
It's a direct consequence of our nation's founding. There was a lot of pain felt at the hands of foreign powers, so we encoded it into the DNA of our governing rules.
Haha, no. That's nice propaganda, but the Brits weren't oppressing the colonists. In fact, they ran just about the most liberal regime in existence at the time (with perhaps the Dutch being the main competition for top spot).
North American colonists were also paying less taxes than people back in England.
See also Canada for what happened to the colonists who stayed 'oppressed'.
Btw, did you know that only a minority of people in the 13 colonies were even in favour of insubordination against the Rightful Authority of the Crown?
I've recently grown to value this idea of "No single person is special or necessary for the government to function." According to the Census Bureau, there are over 150,000,000 native US citizens aged 35 and older. We could have a new president every month and still have a massive number of people to choose from. The only problem would be disruptions from rapid hand offs. The pool is not the issue. Taken to the extreme, this means political assassinations are only meaningful in dissuading replacements from taking the same views and causing temporary disruptions. The lives of politicians aren't inherently worth more than any other person.
As a modern compromise, I think the US should allow people who moved to the US before a certain again (maybe 10 or 12) or have lived in the US for 20+ years. If you want to go a little further, you could require them to renounce any other foreign citizenships upon successful election.
The Australia law caused a bunch of trouble in the last 10 years because a bunch of MPs accidentally had US citizenship by birth to Oz parents living in US or one parent was a US citizen, but they never lived in US. (US citizenship is a bit viral in that sense!) I don't remember all of the details exactly, but it did make me think more deeply about a nationality policy for MPs. I think it is a reasonable requirement.
It has, although the case you mention isn't really my main worry.
In theory some random rogue state (Hello North Korea!), can just grant all of the Australian parliament citizenship. Suddenly they're all ineligible under the constitution.
That said, I assume modern scholars would make the definition more robust than the 19th C definitions used in Australia (which was an attempt to take the best of the UK and USA models, particularly following the US with regards to being a Federation of States, while still maintaining a proper Westminster system without a "King"/Executive branch like in the USA).
It's funny how Russia, of all the countries, had this problem - there are a lot of immigrants from ex-USSR countries, and some of these countries make it very hard to relinquish citizenship. For example in Ukraine this is done only by a presidential order, after a long bureaucratic procedure, and the last such order was signed in 2021. So Russia had to invent a mechanism which allows to write an affidavit certifying you would not exercise any rights given to you by foreign citizenship, and with such an affidavit your citizenship is considered "effectively relinquished" by Russian authorities.
Your compromise would probably work well as a compromise, but honestly, it feels a bit superfluous to have all those restrictions, when you have voters who can apply any criterion they like anyway.
Voters can already resolve by themselves to vote only for people who are native born, or who are of a certain age, or under a certain age, or who like the right football team, or have the right haircolour.
Whether it is silly or not, I'm not sure, but it certainly doesn't seem very democratic.
IMO Arnold Schwarzenegger, to pick a random foreign born politician, should be able to stand for President. People can choose not to vote for him if they've bothered by him being foreign born.
FWIW, in Australia, no member of Federal Parliament (so Congress equivalent) can be a dual citizen (and they must be Australian citizens), so an equivalent to Arnie in Australia would need to renounce their foreign citizenship before standing for election. This seems like a better middle ground than "must be born in the country" to me.