Montana legislator backs amendment
HELENA – A Bozeman lawmaker plans to ask the 2005 Legislature to ratify a pending proposed federal constitutional amendment that would allow foreign-born, naturalized Americans to run for president.
The issue has made headlines in recent months due in part to a push by supporters of California’s popular Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to allow him to run for president.
Schwarzenegger, who has dual U.S. and Austrian citizenship, currently is ineligible to run for president because he was born in Austria. Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution forbids anyone not born in the United States to run for president.
Rep. Chris Harris, D-Bozeman, said his proposal has “nothing to do with Arnold Schwarzenegger,” but is an effort to undo what Harris contends is an obsolete law.
“The relatively scant historical account of this comes from the Constitutional Convention in 1787,” said Harris, a New Mexico native and lawyer. “Really what they worried about was royalty coming over from Europe and impressing the voters here.”
“I think that rationale is now obsolete,” Harris told Lee Newspapers in a telephone interview. “We are truly a nation of immigrants. Many are more patriotic than the native born.”
He cited U.S. Sen.-elect and former Transportation Secretary Mel Martinez, R-Florida, a Cuba native; incoming Commerce Secretary and former Kellogg Co. chief executive Carlos Gutierrez, also born in Cuba; former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, from Czechoslovakia; and Michigan Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm, born in Canada.
“So you have a whole set of extremely qualified people, totally patriotic, who are totally ineligible to run for president,” Harris said.
Under his proposal, Harris said, foreign-born Americans could run for president only if they do not hold dual citizenship.
Harris said he is not crafting his measure to help any potential presidential candidate who might benefit from it. It asks lawmakers to ratify a pending federal amendment that would allow a foreign-born, U.S. resident to run for president as long as he or she has exclusive U.S. citizenship and has been a naturalized U.S. citizen for at least 20 years.
There are two ways to amend the U.S. Constitution.
The only method used so far is to have two-thirds of the members of both the U.S. Senate and House vote to propose an amendment, with three-fourths of the state legislatures then ratifying it.
An unused method is for two-thirds of the legislatures to ask Congress to call a national constitutional convention to propose amendments. After that, three-fourths of the legislatures would have to ratify the amendments.