WASHINGTON — For those pushing a constitutional amendment to allow foreign-born citizens such as California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to run for president, consider how long it took to pass the last constitutional amendment: 203 years.
The campaign that led to final approval in 1992 of the 27th Amendment, which bars Congress from voting itself an instant pay raise, was launched by James Madison.
But supporters of efforts to remove the constitutional bar to presidential candidates who are not "native born" believe the proposed amendment, which has languished in Congress for three years, may gain momentum because of the election of Austrian-born Schwarzenegger as Calfornia governor.
Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, has proposed an amendment to allow foreign-born Americans to run for president after 20 years as U.S. citizens. An amendment with a 35-year requirement has been introduced in the House by a bipartisan group of lawmakers including Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who helped bankroll the successful recall of California Gov. Gray Davis, paving the way for Schwarzenegger’s election.
Issa said he was not backing the constitutional amendment, which was proposed before Schwarzenegger’s election, in order to promote the governor for president. But he said Schwarzenegger was a "good poster child" for amending the Constitution. California would not have been well served, he said, if its constitution had barred foreign-born governors.
Issa acknowledged that the constitutional amendment to allow foreign-born presidents was a long shot. Amendments must be approved by a two-thirds vote of both chambers of Congress and ratified by three fourths of the state legislatures.
"Amending the Constitution is always an uphill fight, as it should be," said Stephen Saltzburg, a George Washington University law professor.
For 200 years, Saltzburg said, the restriction against foreign-born presidents has drawn little criticism, and now the burden is on the amendment’s proponents to show that it would benefit the nation. "That burden may be difficult to bear," he said, "because most people do not lightly reject the status quo when it comes to the Constitution."
Dozens of proposed constitutional amendments have been considered, but not quite made the grade, in recent years. They include amendments to require a balanced budget, ban flag burning, impose term limits on members of Congress, repeal the two-term limit for presidents and abolish the federal income tax. Both the Senate and the House approved a balanced budget amendment, but the Senate voted in 1982 and the House not until 1995.
"The odds are always against any proposal to amend the Constitution," said University of Southern California law professor Erwin Chemerinsky. As for allowing foreign-born citizens to run for president, Chemerinsky said, he did not sense the kind of public concern over a serious problem or need that successful efforts to amend the Constitution require.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
