Re-posting from one of the dead blogs because Temu "Nosferatu" Goebbels is doing his Two Minutes Hate again...
This country was literally founded by immigrants. The only people who didn’t come here by boat were already here—and you aren’t one of them. pic.twitter.com/8DFmUAoj9f
— Alex Cole (@acnewsitics) June 16, 2025
Wish we could ban ingrate citizens from serving, but alas, the Constitution says otherwise:
Art I, Sec 2: No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States...
Art I, Sec 3: No person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States...
Contrast to the Executive1, which office is limited to a natural born Citizen (Art II, Sec 1). The People's branch, however, ought to be representative of the People, including all the People (we'll politely elide a certain fractionary clause) who live in their states and districts. You have to be a citizen to vote, and to serve, but the manner you became a citizen is irrelevant when it comes to Congress, by design.
This question came up2 in Philadelphia on August 13:
Col. HAMILTON [T]he advantage of encouraging foreigners was obvious & admitted...He moved that the section be so altered as to require merely citizenship & inhabitancy...
Mr. MADISON seconded the motion. He wished to maintain the character of liberality which had been professed in all the Constitutions & publications of America. He wished to invite foreigners of merit & republican principles among us. America was indebted to emigrations for her settlement & Prosperity. That part of America which had encouraged them most had advanced most rapidly in population, agriculture & the arts...
Mr. WILSON, cited Pennsylva. as a proof of the advantage of encouraging emigrations. It was perhaps the youngest [except Georgia] settlemt. on the Atlantic; yet it was at least among the foremost in population & prosperity. He remarked that almost all the Genl. officers of the Pena. line of the late army were foreigners. And no complaint had ever been made against their fidelity or merit. Three of her deputies to the Convention [Mr. R. Morris, Mr. Fitzimmons & himself] were also not natives. He had no objection to Col. Hamiltons motion...
As Hamilton later put it in Federalist 52:
[T]he door of this part of the federal government is open to merit of every description, whether native or adoptive, whether young or old, and without regard to poverty or wealth, or to any particular profession of religious faith.
I'm sorry that the Framers were more liberal than you would prefer, but they codified this with good reason; it's a feature, not a bug. If you don't like it - and don't value immigration as they did back then, and many of us do today - then allow me to introduce to my friend, Article V. For now, please kindly fuck off, you ignorant, racist piece(s) of shit.
Selah.
1 - Further contrast to the Judiciary, which has no specific requirements at all. Being appointed means Art I and Art II get to decide the qualifications, but presumably that would include citizenship.
2 - Not for the first time. Debating Senate qualifications on August 9, where there was concern over "foreign attachments" in the chamber that ratifies treaties, future Supreme Court Justice James Wilson said:
[H]e rose with feelings which were perhaps peculiar; mentioning the circumstance of his not being a native, and the possibility, if the ideas of some gentlemen should be pursued, of his being incapacitated from holding a place under the very Constitution, which he had shared in the trust of making. He remarked the illiberal complexion which the motion [increasing citizenship from 4 to 14 years] would give to the System, & the effect which a good system would have in inviting meritorious foreigners among us, and the discouragement & mortification they must feel from the degrading discrimination, now proposed. He had himself experienced this mortification.
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