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Comment by throwaway2037 | Hacker News Reader

throwaway2037

I think Arnie is a great example, especially because he was a governor for two terms for one of the richest and most populous states, California. If he was allowed to run for president, he would be an excellent candidate.

As a modern compromise, I think the US should allow people who moved to the US before a certain again (maybe 10 or 12) or have lived in the US for 20+ years. If you want to go a little further, you could require them to renounce any other foreign citizenships upon successful election.

The Australia law caused a bunch of trouble in the last 10 years because a bunch of MPs accidentally had US citizenship by birth to Oz parents living in US or one parent was a US citizen, but they never lived in US. (US citizenship is a bit viral in that sense!) I don't remember all of the details exactly, but it did make me think more deeply about a nationality policy for MPs. I think it is a reasonable requirement.

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> The Australia law caused a bunch of trouble in the last 10 years

It has, although the case you mention isn't really my main worry.

In theory some random rogue state (Hello North Korea!), can just grant all of the Australian parliament citizenship. Suddenly they're all ineligible under the constitution.

That said, I assume modern scholars would make the definition more robust than the 19th C definitions used in Australia (which was an attempt to take the best of the UK and USA models, particularly following the US with regards to being a Federation of States, while still maintaining a proper Westminster system without a "King"/Executive branch like in the USA).

> In theory some random rogue state (Hello North Korea!), can just grant all of the Australian parliament citizenship. Suddenly they're all ineligible under the constitution.

It's funny how Russia, of all the countries, had this problem - there are a lot of immigrants from ex-USSR countries, and some of these countries make it very hard to relinquish citizenship. For example in Ukraine this is done only by a presidential order, after a long bureaucratic procedure, and the last such order was signed in 2021. So Russia had to invent a mechanism which allows to write an affidavit certifying you would not exercise any rights given to you by foreign citizenship, and with such an affidavit your citizenship is considered "effectively relinquished" by Russian authorities.

> As a modern compromise, I think the US should allow people [...]

Your compromise would probably work well as a compromise, but honestly, it feels a bit superfluous to have all those restrictions, when you have voters who can apply any criterion they like anyway.

Voters can already resolve by themselves to vote only for people who are native born, or who are of a certain age, or under a certain age, or who like the right football team, or have the right haircolour.

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