Did anybody else catch the opinion piece off the U-Wire on Jan. 31? It was titled Foreign-born not fit for presidency.
If you missed it, the lip balm ad gives a good summation: It doesn't hurt to laugh!
Will Gardner of Texas Tech University's points will be shown with quotes that I've placed within quotation marks and introduced with the word passage
italicized and in caps.
PASSAGE: Whoever holds this office is the embodiment of what we are all about.
George W. Check.
PASSAGE: American-born citizens have a natural innate patriotism that runs in their blood. It's something that can't be taught. I am willing to bet an American-born person would die for this country. Would someone born elsewhere feel the same?
This is verbatim from the Web site of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (www.aila.org):
Paul Bucha, President of the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, has stated: I put to you that there is a standard by which to judge whether America is correct to maintain a generous legal immigration policy: Have immigrants and their children and grandchildren been willing to fight and die for the United States of America? The answer right up to the present day remains a resounding 'yes.'
I don't think Gardner is a xenophobe, but for those of you out there who are, check out that Web site. Five Immigration Myths Explained will break your hearts.
Now back to Will.
PASSAGE: Let's say... someone from France gets elected... how do you think he would react if during his term
we had to go to war with France?
I laughed out loud when I read that one. Why France?! Oh, right -TEXAS Tech. This is almost a good argument, actually, except that you don't need to be born in a country in order to love it or have loved ones living there. I, por ejemplo, am a U.S. native and an Anglophile and I have dear friends overseas.
But hark! A hypothetical situation: NASA's next big screw-up lands an expecting mother on the moon. Let's articulate -she's in a moon base built during the mission by an Aborigine bushman, who snuck on board the shuttle. He had his reasons and so did the shifty Cape Canaveral security guard that gave up his sobriety and uniform to allow the bushman's unhindered passage to the launch pad and shuttle. The bushman is not affiliated with NASA or the United States government. No official of any institutional entity, government or otherwise, presides over the birth. Is the child a natural-born U.S. citizen? NOPE! The kid's not even a natural-born Earthling!
But it doesn't matter! Alien birth will affect neither the way the child is brought up nor his or her mental, physical or emotional development.
Ah, but PASSAGE: What if a vehemently anti-American migrated here with the purpose of running the United States into the ground?
Check history and POSSIBLY your bank statement -natural-born Americans can run the country into the ground, too.
That's just history, though. Unimportant stuff. So instead, let's address the conspiracy fear. Anybody seen The Manchurian Candidate? Any anarchists out there? It is possible that a person could take his or her first breath in the United States, hate the place for every second thereafter and eventually, from behind the desk of the Oval Office, execute a plot to topple the government and wipe out the population.
My point? No one is BORN a patriot. You become a patriot. And to generalize about a people is, if not discrimination, a big step toward discrimination. So don't, or my Mooninite friend will beat you up.
-Jeffrey Smith, a sophomore journalism major, is a Post copy editor. Send him an e-mail at jeffrey.r.smith.@ohiou.edu
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