Can natural born citizens run for president if they’ve lived long enough in the States?

20 comments

1. He would still be eligible because his mother was an American citizen. Birthers are just dumb.

2. The requirements for president are

   – 35 years old
   – Natural born citizen
   – must have lived in the US for at least 14 years

3. You’ve already put more critical thought into it than any birther.

4. The birthers have their facts wrong in many ways.

   Yes, natural born citizens, even if born abroad, are eligible to run for president (provided they meet the other requirements)

5. In order to qualify for the presidency, a person must be a natural-born citizen who is at least 35 y.o and lived in America for at least fourteen years. This is written into our constitution (Article II, Section 1, Clause 5).

   The entire birther movement was trying to discredit Obama’s claim to the presidency by arguing that his birth certificate was fake, among other things.

   Insofar as conspiracy theories go it was fairly low-effort.

6. Any American whose heritage meets the legal standard of “natural born” is eligible.

   This is why Rafael Cruz (born in Canada to a Cuban father and an American mother) could and did run for POTUS.

7. Don’t try to understand stupidity.

8. Yep. Sen. Ted Cruz was born in Canada, but has run in the Republican primary for president. He would be eligible for the same reason.

9. The birther people were/are just racist. They didn’t care about facts.

10. Yaa, It’s because he was black, it only made sense if you were a racist.

11. You are correct. The birther bullshit was entirely partisan and racial in motivation. It was also hypocritical. I didn’t hear similar complaints when Ted Cruz ran for president: like Obama, only his mother was a US citizen when Ted was born; unlike Obama, Ted was born outside of the US.

    If I’m not mistaken, John McCain, who ran multiple presidential campaigns, was also born outside of the US. Don’t remember hearing complaints about that.

12. The birther movement wasn’t comprised of people who thought about things.

13. John McCain was born in Panama, and yet I never saw his citizenship being questioned when he ran for president.

    It’s rather obvious that birthers were reaching, at the very least, for any reason Obama couldn’t be president, and were blatantly ignoring their own arguments when it became inconvenient.

14. You have it right, birthers are ignorant, dumb, and racist. That’s really all there is to it.

15. John McCain was born in Panama

16. Any person born in the U.S is eligible to run for the presidency, so long as they are over the age of 35, and have been living in the country for at least 14 years (so, no living abroad). Furthermore, our 14th Amendment grants birthright citizenship to any child born in the U.S, even if the parents aren’t citizens.

    Obama was born in Hawaii, and was 42-years-old the first time he ran for the presidency, so he was eligible from the very beginning.

    The Birther Movement only claimed he wasn’t due to racism. It’s that simple.

17. Had Obama been born abroad (which he wasn’t) he would NOT have been a natural born citizen. In order for his mother to convey that to him the law at the time required that she reside in the US for five years after her 14th birthday. She was only 18 when he was born, thus unable to convey citizenship through birth.

18. Wasn’t Obama born in Hawaii? Isn’t that in the United States?

19. Funny enough the rule was probably put in place to stop Alexander Hamilton from ever being president. I think it’s silly personally. But Thomas Jefferson hated him and here we are

20. Nope. Gotta be born here.