I'm more qualified for prez than McCain

Well, technically, anyway.

Think back to junior-high civics. Constitutionally, the three basic requirements for U.S. president are: being a "natural-born citizen," being at least 35 years old and having lived in the U.S. at least 14 years.

This is the reason that, despite the Simpsons Movie, you won't be seeing a Schwarzenegger for Prez campaign anytime soon, though some have tried to work around it. According to this NYT article, there is some question over whether McCain qualifies as a "natural-born citizen."

I, on the other hand, have ample, incontrovertible proof that I was born in El Barrio. As for the age bit, sadly, I have reached that mark with a couple to spare.

Here's the point. McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936, when it was under U.S. control as an "unincorporated territory." A year later, Congress passed a law that granted U.S. citizenship to people born there, but Prof. Gabriel Chin at Univ. of Arizona says that doesn't meet a strict definition of "natural-born," which implies at the time of birth.

This is an unintended consequence of the U.S.'s desire to draw lines and parse out rights to leave out broad swaths of undesirables from citizenship while controlling their lands and resources. "Unincorporated territory" is the same status given to Puerto Rico in 1898, as well as to the Philippines, Guam,  Cuba and other stategic targets, such as a set of uninhabited islands off the coast of Colombia with vast guano deposits that produced, literally, a shitload of cash.

The "Insular Cases" which Prof. Chin is using as the basis for his argument were used to disenfranchise Puerto Ricans (and Filipinos) by ruling that "unincorporated territories acquired by the United States were not part of the nation for constitutional purposes."

In plain English: McCain was close, but no cigar when it comes to being "natural-born" as a U.S. citizen. The law that granted it to him may work retroactively, but does not meet the test, according to Prof. Chin. Of course, lots of folks say that it's a technicality and that as far as they're concerned, he qualifies.

Given how the cheapening of citizenship is so much the unnamed battleground in debates over immigration, national security and surveillance, it's telling to see for whom these definitions are enforced to the letter (i.e., the parents of U.S. citizens) and for whom they are bent (old-guard white male Republicans).

[Pix of Pres. Schwarzenegger via Simpsons Movie site; pix of John McCain, dad John Sidney McCain Jr. and granddad John Sidney McCain in Panama's Canal Zone from McCain presidential campaign, via NYT]

Comments

[Kiko Jones]

"Given how the cheapening of citizenship is so much the unnamed battleground in debates over immigration, national security and surveillance, it's telling to see for whom these definitions are enforced to the letter (i.e., the parents of U.S. citizens) and for whom they are bent (old-guard white male Republicans)."

In a nutshell.

There's a special place in hell for those who think a US-born child has a choice between leaving with their deported parents or staying behind in foster care.