Can Arnold Schwarzenegger be President of the US?
I'll answer my own question.
Obviously not.
However, this does seem to fly right at the face of the XIV Amendment of the Constitution:
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
So, if the XIV Amendment's intent is to erase all differences in "privileges and immunities" between "naturalized" and "born... in the United States" citizens, then why does Federal law prohibit "naturalized" citizens from the "privilege" of holding the office of POTUS?
Doesn't Federal election law in fact create citizenships of differing value in violation of the spirit of the XIV Amendment?
It obviously does, does it not?
So what we have now are two types of citizenships, with one holding a higher standing in tbe eyes of the law than the other. A "born... in the United States" citizen has one protected "privilege" that is not available to the other.
Then comes Section 1, Article 2 of the Constitution:
No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.So, in order for someone to qualify they had to be thirty-five years old and living in the United States since their 21st birthday, AND they had to be born after the ratification of the Constitution, otherwise the "Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution" carve out wouldn't be necessary. Only the people who were older than 35 at the time of the ratification, and that mythical "natural born" citizen qualified to hold the office under the Clause.
So, you had to be alive on September 17, 1787 to qualify for the office of POTUS if you weren't that elusive "natural born" citizen.
Now, the discrepancy between Federal electoral law and the XIV Amendment which disallow a naturalized citizen like Arnold Schwarzenegger (and myself) from holding the office of POTUS makes it obvious that there are difference classes of citizenship:
Jus soli (born on the soil) and "naturalized" (citizenship via act of Congress). Section 1, Article 2 tells us that there are two classes of "born" citizens.
The difference between that "born... in the United States" citizen of the XIV Amendment, and the "natural born" citizen of Section 1, Article 2 is how the citizenship is transmitted from child to parent.
A "natural born" citizen acquires citizenship via a bond of blood to the nation where it is born, via the transference of blood where there that blood is not tainted by allegiances to a foreign government.
In the words of John Bingham: "Every human being born within the United States of
parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is in the language of your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen." - (Speech delivered to the U.S. Congress, March 9, 1866)
If the man who authored the XIV Amendment drew that line of distinction between being simply born here, and being born here with parents (plural) who owed any measure of allegiance to a foreign government drew that line of distinction, then I don't see how anyone could argue that Barack Obama, who was born with dual citizenship and whose father was a British subject ( as was Barack) at the time of his birth qualifies for the office of POTUS.
P.S. Ann Dunham was not old enough at the time of Barry's birth to confer US citizenship to Barry.