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

ARGUMENTSI have four contentions: That the United States should not prevent hard-working people from running, that each indivdual has the right to run, that the American people have the right to choose who they will elect for president, and that the old law was written under conditions that no longer exist.C1) USA: The land of opportunity The United States has long been known as a country where immigrants can succeed through hard work alone. As of 2006, the United States accepts more legal immigrants as permanent residents than all other countries in the world combined [1]. About 40 percent of the population growth in the US comes from immigration [2].This shows that the constant influx of people into the United States which has continued for over 500 years since Columbus discovered it in 1492 is still occurring. Since then there has been immigration from Europe, Africa and more recently from Asia (including India, China and the Philippines) as well as Mexico [1]. Considering the history of the United States, it is justified that immigrants should be able to run for the office of president.The difficulty of navigating through the process, obtaining an education related to politics, getting experince as a senator or a governor, being nominated by the political party, and campaigning: those are challenges that an immigrant (or anybody else for that matter) must face before they are eligible to be voted for by the American people. There is no reason to add an artificial challenge; namely that they cannot be eligible to run for president just because they are immigrants. The experience of the person as well as the vote of the American people is all that matters. C2) People should have a right to run for officeThe rights of American citizens is the basic framework through which all laws must be made. Individual rights are extremely important and lie at the core of American culture. When immigrants are barred from running for president, they are not given equal rights as all other US citizens. They should be eligible to run just by virtue of being an American citizen. This restriction is unjust because the person in question can never fulfill the requirement of being born in the USA. All he can do is show his loyalty to the United States by being a competent and fair senator, governor, or congresssman. The "naturized citizen" restriction unfairly and arbitrarily infriges on the rights of these American citizens. C3) Archaic lawThe original purpose of the natural-born-citizen clause was an attempt to allay concerns that foreign aristocrats would immigrate to the new nation and use their wealth and influence to impose a monarchy on the new nation [3].This was a long time ago in the 1700s when the US was a new country and it was feared that the European colonial powers would immigrate to the United States and take control. This is no longer applicable as monarchy is completely dying out and European colonialism for all practical purposes no longer exists. Immigration has drastically changed. While immigration during the formation of the United States involved European colonials fighting for power, legal immigration today involves immigrants arriving in the US to make a better life for themselves. The likelihood of a Monarchy is infinitesimal. The conditions under which the law was written no longer exist.C4) People should have a right to vote for who they wantIt also bars people from voting for an immigrant. For example, if the majority of Americans in every state wanted to vote for an immigrant for president, and he wanted to run, he should be allowed to campaign and people should be allowed to vote for him if they so choose. The interests of the people are the most important things to consider when electing a president. The people of the United States have a right to decide whether or not they would vote for someone based on their birthplace rather than a 300 year old law designed for a completely different purpose. They are a better judge of the character of the candidate than the old irrelevant law which is pre-emptive in nature and irrelevant to the modern day United States.ConclusionSince the original conditions have long since passed and the only thing the clause now does is to restrict hard-working American citizens from being eligible to run for president, it must changed.Sources[1] http://en.wikipedia.org...[2] http://news.xinhuanet.com...[3] http://en.wikipedia.org...