Firebrand CongressTotty Nancy Mace has an idea:
South Carolina GOP Representative Nancy Mace introduced a joint resolution on Wednesday proposing a constitutional amendment that would explicitly bar naturalized citizens from serving in Congress, the federal judiciary, or holding any Senate-confirmed positions.
The proposed legislation seeks to extend the “natural-born citizen” constraint — which currently applies only to the presidency and vice presidency under Article II of the U.S. Constitution — to all members of the House of Representatives, the Senate, federal judges at all levels, and prominent appointed officers such as Cabinet members and ambassadors.
If passed and ratified, the amendment would establish a strict dual-track citizenship restriction, requiring federal lawmakers and officials to have held U.S. citizenship from birth.
Okay, I need to talk about this because I am a naturalized U.S. citizen (35 years, give or take a few months), and of course I would be affected by such legislation. (Not that I care, because age and inclination would exclude me from any of the above lofty offices anyway.)
Now I can understand why Our Nancy would be suggesting such a thing, because let’s be honest, I bet there are more than a few naturalized U.S. citizens who are bent on overthrowing the republic rather than thanking their lucky stars (as I do, every day) for being allowed to share in the American Dream.
So I can see why she would be interested in such an action. The words “Quisling” and “fifth column” (a.k.a. Trojan horse) come to mind here, and probably with some justification.
However, allow me to point out that arch-Nazi collaborator Vidkun Quisling was not a naturalized Norwegian citizen, but native-born. And let’s be perfectly blunt about this: for every naturalized citizen who may be harboring evil subversive ideas about his adopted country, I can probably point to several native-born citizens who are just as evil (Ocasio-Cortez comes to mind).
However, Mace’s proposed legislation would also rid us of pustules like Ilhan Omar and Pramila Jayapal, to mention just two, who infest Congress like some malignant cancer.
So: is Nancy Mace’s proposed legislation a Good Thing? Here’s what else she said, in support of it:
Mace argued that the amendment simply extends the rigorous constitutional standard already required of the president to other critical positions of national trust.
…and mentions Super-Pustule Ilhan Omar specifically as evidence.
This would mean, by the way, that there’d be in essence two kinds of citizenship: native-born, to whom all things are possible; and naturalized, who could do anything except run the country.
This would mean that people like me — super-patriots, despite having been born in the wrong country — would be excluded from the levers of power.
In today’s political climate, though, I’m not sure that that’s a bad thing.
Feel free to argue the point in Comments.
By the way, some might ask why I refer to Nancy Mace as a “CongressTotty”.
Q.E.D.
I’d support it. Not perfect, but a step in the right direction. Next we just need to repeal the 19th Amendment (among others). Women already had enough political power (the hand that rocks the cradle, etc), so giving them the franchise and not requiring any obligations on their parts before they could exercise it (men have to sign up to die for our country first, women just have to show up) meant they had even *more* power with even less accountability. National politics has been pandering to them ever since, to the detriment of men and the country at large.
I’m for it, being a natural born cititzen and I respect your understanding that at this critical juncture, this separation is certainly judicious if not actually necessary. BTW…. truth in advertising… Ms. Nancy Mace is available (although twice divorced puts a slight damper on the ol’ enthusiasm. Jes’ Sayin’).
Better idea, dump that particular resolution and just stop 90% of the immigration that allows such trash into our country in the first place. This particular resolution is treating symptoms, not the cause. So it’s ok that people like Ilhan Omar and Pramila Jayapal are allowed in the country by the millions, we just won’t let them serve in congress? Nope, fuck that.
I know, I know, horse already out, barn door closing, etc.
A 45-70 can stop a horse out of a barn.
I’m already on record against this, and similar measures such as barring people who hold dual citizenship.
This is exactly the sort of thing where people who know better need to speak up. Both of these measures carry an inescapable fatal flaw: the metric does not measure the value actually being sought. Since it doesn’t actually measure the value, and only bears a weak correlation to it, it is poorly suited to bringing about the desired result, and can NOT be depended to do so.
It cannot produce the positive value, and it does introduce perverse incentives, which will be pursued, which will inevitably subtract value from the operation and throw yet another layer of complexity into what is already an intractable mess.
It’s a nice thought, but seriously, we need to go back to the drawing board on this.
Geeky, the problem is that it’s impossible to establish a cost/benefit metric on barring immigrants from holding positions of authority. It’s always a question of “what might have been”.
Sure, it would be a bummer for people like myself, who came here for the promise of the American Dream and want to maintain it. And under Mace’s suggestion we would genuinely like to contribute, but couldn’t because of an accident of birth.
I’m willing to bet, though, that if you were to poll immigrants like me — that would be conservative people — about it, they would overwhelmingly be saddened by the restriction, but would probably still support the restriction. Just in case.
I disagree. So far in this everyone has focused on the most odous of the Democrats.
But what about naturalized Republicans? I asked Claude, and this is part of it’s response:
Republican naturalized members:
Victoria Spartz (IN-05) received CPAC’s Award for Conservative Excellence (meaning she scored 90%+). house
Juan Ciscomani scores 83% on the Heritage Action Scorecard for the 119th Congress (a comparable conservative metric). Heritage Action For America
Young Kim is known as a moderate Republican and bipartisan lawmaker, suggesting a lower CPAC score than Spartz.
Carlos Gimenez is a conservative Cuban-American Republican likely scoring in the 70–85% range.
Bernie Moreno is a first-term senator (new to the 119th Congress), so no full ACU rating is available for him yet.
There are other congressmen who hold dual citizenship, Ted Cruz used to before he renounced it (if you include Canada as “foreign”). Others may hold dual citizenship through no effort of their own–at one point a friend of mine *techinally* had dual citizenship in the Soviet Union, because his entire family were menonites, and the USSR had granted all of them citizenship in hopes that they’d come back and make the Soviet wheat belt great again.
It’s fairly easy to get a broad sense of whether allowing naturalized citizens to hold federal office, find some acceptable metric (I tried to use CPAC scores), then count up the Ds and teh Rs and look at the numbers.
I tried to get Claude to do this for me, but I don’t have it hooked up to a web browser, so it couldn’t get into the CPAC scores, and I didn’t want to put any more effort into it on a saturday night.
Now, you’d have to do this for say the last 50 years, which makes it a bit more work, and you might want to get scores from 2 or 3 different places, but it’s *certainly* doable.
You have to break a few eggs. Sorry Kim, I’d do without you to get rid of the tumors like Omar, et al. Its nothing personal.
I would also ban Dual Citizens from having ANY .gov job elected or otherwise. Meaning you are a citizen of THIS country alone, if you punch a hole in the boat you sink along with the rest of us.
This may sound Krool&hartless, but in my government, if it took out HALF the employees, it would only impact 100 people.
Brother Preusse, no offense taken, I assure you.
While I’d like to think that immigrants like myself MAY bring something positive to the party — i.e. “we’ve seen what happened in our old countries when we tried that, and it sucked” — there’s also way too much potential Prayapal-type evil possible as well.
Hell as it stands now, you still are eligible for WH Press Secretary. Get your Resume’ submitted.
Sounds like the DNI position just opened up.
Many (most?) naturalized citizens made a conscious choice and expended some time and effort to get that outcome. Yes, some are evil and some are stupid, but those conditions are not necessarily related to how they got here.
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As far as the pulcritude of the Honorable Ms. Mace.
Sometimes she looks hotter than hell, other times she’s “erm” depending on the photo. Lets call her “Congress Pretty”.
I was trying to explain the concept above to a buddy, How mid-range gals look gorgeous because the available females around are frightful. I called it “Alaska Pretty”. Now there are some gorgeous Alaskan wimmen, but they stand out because of the background team. Its not the same as saying “Brazillian Pretty”
I thought I had come up with a clever, witty concept. He looked at me and said verbatim, “In the Army we called them Deployment Beauty Queens.”
I think I laughed my ass off.
For women at work, typically we’d state she’s a “work 7”, but anywhere else a 5 is being generous. All depends on the available competition.
Not everyone needs to be eligible. It’s not personal. It should be overly narrow. We should be excluding people who are otherwise perfect in order to safeguard the republic. Not everyone is eligible for the House of Lords. Not everyone is royalty. Even those not natural born can have natural born children (although if were king of America I would adopt something more like deuteronomy 23, Christian European cultures are natural born at 1st gen, other Christian at 3rd, Jewish and far eastern at the 5th, Muslim and Hindu not unto the 10th.)
The problem is, where do you stop?
Maybe anyone whose parents weren’t natural born citizens should be excluded as well, because they got taught their value system by people who weren’t natural born citizens?
As to dual citizenship. There are countries that don’t allow you to reject your citizenship, and others that make it nigh on impossible (the USA themselves are among the latter group btw.).
People from those countries may well WANT to reject their citizenship, but it’s made impossible to them by the country they were born in (or under, for example anyone born of Moroccan parents is automatically Moroccan, even if their parents are dual citizens of another country who never even visited Morocco let alone living there).
The USA again has similar things in place regarding citizenship, and even more nefarious grants citizenship to any child born on its soil even if the parents don’t want them to have it!
That’s how anchor babies can exist. You come to the US without citizenship as a couple, have a child there, and now as your child is a US citizen you get an automatic residence permit for life.
Well –
First off, it would require a constitutional amendment. Legal requirements to serve in Congress are set by the Constitution, and any additions to them would have to be there as well. (BTW – term limits would also require Constitutional change)
As a practical matter, it is impossible for this to get 2/3 support in congress and then 3/4 of the states. With all due respect to Ms. Mace, this is the kind of proposal that is designed to serve as red meat to rally and fire up the base during primary season, not as a serious proposal.
Secondly – and our host her is a prime example, we are cutting ourselves off from a great deal of talent, and talent that CHOSE to be here, not by mere accident of birth. Yes, there are the postulant miscreants like Ilhan Omar, but there are also countless naturalized citizens who have contributed in public service. I’d run up Elon Musk, for example, to run the country, but like our host, he’s ineligible for president. Henry Kissinger (love him or hate him), Madelyn Albright, Tammy Duckworth, etc. You may agree or disagree with their politics, but naturalized persons serve their country no less.
Like yourself, am a naturalized citizen of 35 years effective May 14th and could not agree with you more on the issue of extending the same restriction placed on the presidency to ALL federal congresscritters.
You could even talk me into the terms being more stringent, say that you must also have at least 3 generations before you born in the U.S. of A. to run for elected office.
And while we are at it, deport every sodding person that has entered the country illegally or overstayed their visas, which by definition also makes them law breakers and freeloaders.
God, guns and liberty power those who defend our freedoms,. The old “love AND defend it or leave it” is a permanent philosophy so yes, there are quite a few in the three branches of government that should “go”.
Without clean elections (and I mean cleaning up the NGO funding mess AND the voting shenanigans) it doesn’t matter, and if you clean up the elections then let the people vote for who they want to vote for. It doesn’t matter that Omar is a Somali, it matters that the people in her district what someone like her on office (assuming clean elections).
You can’t prohibit people from voting for fascist, criminal scum (unless you catch them and convict them first) so prohibiting people who come to this country because the love it, and want to serve it just because of people like Omar might be leaving a lot on the table.
The Framers addressed this in the Constitution. The President must be natural-born, Senators must be citizens for nine years, Representatives for seven years.
Good enough for them, good enough for me.
Oddly, there is no similar requirement for federal judges – not even citizenship.