Immigrants should be eligible to run for office of the President of the United States

This Debate is about Policy. Con continues to make strong arguments for why immigrants should be granted equal rights as any other American, and how being granted equal rights will help all Americans live better lives. By reading his arguments you would think we are talking about freedom of speech, or the right to marry. Running for president is something very few people seriously aspire to do, and far fewer will ever successfully accomplish. Coupled with the fact that immigrants only make up 12% of the population(1) the number of Americans whose lives are negatively affected by this restriction is infinitesimal and hardly worthy of consideration in this debate. What affects the quality of American lives is the strength of society, which is fueled in large part by the decisions made by its government. If we are debating who should be eligible to run for President, that decision must be based on having the best leadership possible to lead the country, not fulfilling the desires of those who wish to run. How is Policy Determined? Earlier I used my grandma analogy which I don’t quite think was understood. The point of the analogy was to demonstrate that even rules which seem ridiculous or seem to go to far in any one instance, need to be in place and consistently followed to protect the overall good. I think it is safe to say that 99.9% of people who bring cologne onto an airplane do so because they want to smell better. Yet if you try this you are likely to get it taken away. Seems ridiculous? Consider the one instance where it turns out not to be cologne, the results are far worse then a few confiscated cologne bottles. Also consider how much perfectly good food is thrown away every year to stay in line with safety regulations, or how many people travel with those darn uncomfortable seatbelts yet get home perfectly safe. In each of these examples the harms caused by the rare instances of the unexpected far outweighs the harms caused by the restrictions themselves. Unexpected outcomes are natural because we are all human beings and we can not tell the future. There is no way to know what the results of any event or decision will be, so following policies like these without exception are the only way to prevent the worst of results in any circumstance. My argument will show why electing an immigrant increases the chances of these types of results. Con Case 1. Changes should be made based on likelihood of US success I think I have already clarified what US success depends on. Pros rebuttal here is simply a distraction from the main point; if the likelihood of US success decreases because of these changes then these changes should not be made. This is a fairly simple statement and one I doubt Pro can disagree on. 2. Success requires Presidential decisions to be made based solely on US interests. We agree on the basic message. 3.People have a natural loyalty to the land in which they originate. Pro correctly assumes that I was referring to most people. His statement that a person who runs for President is likely to have an intense loyalty to the country they serve is correct. By natural loyalty I am not saying that a person will only care about their own nation, but that they will still care about it. It is a personal connection to that nation which is potentially very dangerous for a commander in chief to have. I doubt Pro disagrees that this connection is very likely to exist in any immigrant, and very unlikely to exist for another country in any natural born US citizen. 4. People who have a natural loyalty to a foreign land will be more likely to include foreign interests in their decision making. Pro refutes this statement by saying that this will only be a problem for the average immigrant, but not an exceptional one. The ultimate problem is: how do we determine who is an exceptional one? This requires mind reading which voters are not capable of. Presidential candidates are placed under intense scrutiny when running for office but ultimately the person who wins is not always the person who is best for the job but the person who ran the best campaign. Many who voted for Barack Obama now regret it, and Arnold Schwarzenegger won his election for governor with no staff, no plan, and did not even decide to run until two months before the election while he was on his way to the Jay Leno show(2). With the concept of who will make the best President impossible to accurately determine, we must consider if there is an objective reason to conclude whether the chances of a candidate not being the best choice exists. Earlier I mentioned that a person will have a natural loyalty to the land in which they originate due to a personal connection. It is that personal connection that is so dangerous. There are obviously no examples of immigrants as president to compare, but there is an example of a president who had a personal connection to the job and how it affected the outcome; George W Bush. When Bush was elected no one was talking about Iraq, yet suddenly a few years later we were at war with them. The entire war was sold on “weapons of mass destruction” which were later found to have never existed. Very few people doubt that some of the decisions made by Bush had to do with the fact that his father was President during the Golf war and that he wanted to finish what his father started. This very understandably is what may have led to his not only being convinced that WMD’s were present, but also being able to convince congress that WMD’s were. With the costs still ongoing, the US lost over three trillion dollars(3) and over four thousand American lives(4) over something that didn’t even exist. It is also noteworthy that despite all we knew about this in 2004, Bush still won re-election. Having a personal connection to anything is very dangerous when you are in a position to make decisions concerning it. People have a tendency to be swayed by their emotions even when the job requires them not to. This is why conflict of interest restrictions are enforced throughout our society. This is an objective fact of human nature which must be considered in matters of policy. 5. The proposed changes will not increase the likelihood of US success. Because of this objective fact the conclusion is obvious. This personal connection is very dangerous, and far more likely to exist in an immigrant, therefore restricting immigrants from running for President lowers the chances of this connection causing harm. Rebuttals. Due to space limitations I will have to make these very short… B) Pro states that people are responsible for their own decisions. He is suggesting here that the constitution has no place enforcing a rule that will protect the country, yet that is the purpose of the constitution. Democracy is a general term. The constitution defines democracy in America. C) I find Pros conviction argument irrelevant. Whether convicted felons should be allowed to run for President is an entirely different debate, yet Pros statement presupposes it. His basic point is that two wrongs make a right. C1) Pro again states that immigrants should have the same rights as naturalized citizens, yet gives no reason why the US should be obligated to offer every single right to them with this offer. His argument here is an appeal to emotion. C2) US Citizenship is not defined by Pros ideals; it is defined by the US. C3) My argument has nothing to do with monarchy or colonialism. Pros rebuttal is irrelevant. C4) Pro asks why should we be limited in choosing a leader. My argument has already addressed this question. (1) http://www.nytimes.com...(2) http://en.wikipedia.org...(3) http://www.washingtonpost.com...(4) http://www.cbsnews.com...