The US requires a fairly high minimum age and for someone to be born American. Those requirements seem also a bit silly and stand in the way of voters expressing their wishes.
For some fun times, have a look at the requirements to become president in Singapore. Basically, you either have to have been a senior civil servant before or the CEO of a large and profitable company.
> Having someone born in the country they are looking to lead seems silly to you?
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.
> would need to renounce their foreign citizenship before standing for election
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 think Arnie is a great example, especially because he was a governor for two terms for one of the richest and most populous states, California. If he was allowed to run for president, he would be an excellent candidate.
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.
> The Australia law caused a bunch of trouble in the last 10 years
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).
> 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.
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.
> As a modern compromise, I think the US should allow people [...]
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.
> Have you looked at trying to even just immigrate to Japan?
Here I am again to dispel this HN myth about immigration and 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.
>The reservoir of potential candidates is vast. The risk this mitigates seems important enough to give up on additional potential candidates.
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.
Well the American born presidential policy is just strange because it seems so un-American. You’d think the country would have had at least one range to riches president who was a refugee from some war torn country by now, it’s just such a fundamental part of the nation’s mythos.
> Regardless of how you feel, a country should be able to set its own policies.
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?
If voters care so much, they can change the policy. Everything is mutable with enough will.
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.
Born in the country lessens the likelihood that you are beholden to more than one master. Born in another country then naturalized still does not rule out sleeper agent situations. Seems pretty obvious to me.
I'm one that questions the whole pledge of allegiance forced to be recited by children that have no wherewithal to understand what allegiance even means or the ramifications of that pledge. Yet, I'm okay with born in country and of a minimum age.
The UK's recent prime minister Boris Johnson was born in the US two British parents who happened to be studying in Manhatten at the time. They all moved back here a few months later. The idea that he could be some sort of US sleeper agent is hilarious, though.
Well, formally the Prime Minister is just some random bloke appointed by king to help him run the country. The PM doesn't even need to be a member of parliament!
Now the king, that guy can't even be catholic! And until recently, couldn't even be female with living brothers.
And yet when you look at the great espionnage stories, the perpetrators were citizens of the country.
When you look at people who were "almost born" (came to the country as toddlers) or naturalized because of the love of their new country, purple claiming that they are second category citizens are hard to listen to.
Maybe because the policy exists that people have not so easily been able to get to the top position. Remove that policy and Putin himself could run for the office. It's an idiotic comment for an idiotic misunderstanding of why the policy exists
Though probably not: by German law Hitler could already not have been in power, because he wasn't properly a German citizen at the time. (It's all very murky.)
Hitler was already in power illegally. The law we are discussing here would have just made it 'even more illegal'.
(I'm using the weasel wording 'in power' here, because I forgot whether he needed to be a citizen to be a member of the Reichstag at all, or only to become chancellor.)
Hitler was a "foreign puppet"? This is news to me, can you tell us who the puppet master was? Because it seems to me that person should be as widely reviled as the man himself.
Having a minimum age to get some life experience is fine, and 35 I would consider a good age, however the minimum age in the USA these days seems like 70.
As for being born in the country, I'm sure with the challenge to birthright citizenship that will get changed in short order to both being born in the country and having your parents and ancestors also be citizens.
Maybe it will change to more of a hereditary system where people had records to prove their ancestry was noble.
> Having someone born in the country they are looking to lead seems silly to you?
Yes and it looks especially silly for a country which used to pride itself on being composed primarily of immigrants. In fact the current president is one of the people who was pushing conspiracy theories about a previous president not being eligible - the "birther" movement around Barack Obama. At the time that movement was small enough and the far right was distant enough from the levers of power that people could laugh it off. But it would not surprise me whatsoever if in the future the US right pulled something similar to what Turkey did here, stripping a rival candidate or a portion of the electorate of their status to strengthen their own bid.
And we should celebrate it for the civilisational advance that it is, promoting it all over the world, instead of continuously attacking its legitimacy.
We have long rejected the idea that blood should dictate your social position in the tribe; but somehow we cling to the idea that it should dictate whether you belong to the tribe at all. Why? It's not with this mindset that we will reach the stars.
> And we should celebrate it for the civilisational advance that it is, [...]
Well, as far as I can tell, it's only in your constitution sort-of by accident.
They didn't put this 'advance' in original, it was just the simplest and most face saving way to free the slaves without directly mentioning slaves in the text. (Compare the 3/5 compromise for 'other persons', which also avoids mentioning slaves by that term.)
If it wasn't silly apartheid kid psychos like Elon or Peter Thiel could run for president. But fortunately they can't because of those silly requirements. Unfortunately that's not enough to stop psychos that can actually run, as we have all witnessed.
Although I agree on the silliness of the citizenship-at-birth rule, a maximalist approach to democracy can be very dangerous. The most unstable democracies of the past century were, often, the most democratic ones - Weimar, various French republics, etc.
The democratic paradox is real, and finding ways to minimize its worst outcomes can be legitimate.
I agree that this is a valid concern. However, we should then carefully review which restrictions actually help with stability and which restrictions are a nuisance.
It's instructive to compare the constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany with the Weimar Republic. For example, while modern Germany still uses proportional representation, you need 5% of the votes to get any seats at all. (I'm simplifying a bit.) And you can no longer have a pure 'vote of no confidence' in parliament to bring down the government, you need to simultaneously put a new one in power, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructive_vote_of_no_confid...
As for the US president: I think the requirement for a minimum age and for citizenship are fair enough, because these are fairly easy to verify once and for all. But I think that the requirement for citizenship at birth is, if anything, bad for stability: remember the birthers?
Now imagine that in Obama's 6th year in office, some random birther had actually found some reasonably compelling evidence (but not compelling enough to make even Obama supporters agree). Can you imagine the chaos?
If you believe in democracy and the will of the people, it seems more appropriate for voters to decide whether they want Arnold Schwarzenegger as president, instead of banning him over a technicality.
The US does have some very weird rules for its Presidents though, both written rules - the "natural born citizen" clause for example, or the minimum age (thirty five years old) and the unwritten rules - no women have ever been elected to this role although the rules don't forbid it, most Americans have also indicated they wouldn't elect anybody who admitted to atheism...
> no women have ever been elected to this role although the rules don't forbid it
The same is true of the role of Leader of the UK Labour Party–but I wonder how many people would suggest that the UK Labour Party has an "unwritten rule" that its leader must be male?
So they think the UK's main centre-left party has an "unwritten rule" against female leaders, when its main centre-right party very obviously doesn't (having a female leader right now, its fourth, and having just last month marked the fiftieth anniversary of its first election of a female leader). How do they explain that? I mean, what about the UK Labour Party's ideology leads it to having an "unwritten rule" against female leadership at its highest level, while the ideology of the UK Conservative Party leads them to embrace such leadership repeatedly?
It's a party about working men not actually a "centre-left party". Hence its decision to humiliate and probably in some cases kill people in order to "encourage work". It looks centre-left on a simplistic axis where the Protestant Work Ethic is assumed as some sort of necessary background rather than an increasingly weird religious belief.
The US does have this problem to a greater extent - don't get me wrong - but the UK doesn't really have a party which is open to the idea that maybe the objectionable thing isn't the use of the words Arbeit Macht Frei over those German camps, the problem is that they're not true.
For some fun times, have a look at the requirements to become president in Singapore. Basically, you either have to have been a senior civil servant before or the CEO of a large and profitable company.
https://www.eld.gov.sg/candidate_presidential_qualify.html
Singapore's president is a figurehead, so it doesn't matter too much.