Via AL.com: Alabama officials want to ban naturalized citizens from holding elected office.
Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen and a Republican state senator want to change the state Constitution to require the state’s elected officials to be citizens born in the United States.
The natural born citizen requirement would apply to all of Alabama’s elected posts that are designated by the state Constitution – governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, legislators, judges, sheriffs, and others.
Allen, who is running for lieutenant governor, said the idea is to apply the same standard that requires the president and vice president to be born in the United States.
[…]
“We want to make sure that no potential foreign influence or foreign meddling could impact our state’s highest elected leaders.”
That would exclude naturalized citizens, those born outside the country who complete the process to become citizens.
My first thought is that this is just blatantly xenophobic, if not simply racist. This is part any parcel of kind of white nationalist politics that wants to stoke fears about foreign Others just for the sake of stirring the pot. It is an attempt to say that naturalized citizens aren’t “real” Americans.
Of course, it is based on the broader political moment.
Allen said he came up with the idea because of what he says is a trend of people born outside the United States running for high-profile offices.
He gave two examples. Zohran Mamdani, a state representative in New York running for mayor of New York City, is a democratic socialist who was born in Uganda.
It seems worth noting that there is no evidence to suggest that there is any reason to assume that naturalized citizens would be agents of influence by foreign governments. This is purely a move that is born either of prejudice or the cynical manipulation of prejudice (or, los dos).
It seems worth noting that only the president is currently required to be “natural born” and that had more to do with the politics of the 1780s than anything of relevance today. Quite frankly, I would have no problem removing that requirement from the Constitution.
Here are the current requirements in the Alabama Constitution.
Currently under the Alabama constitution, the governor and lieutenant governor have to be citizens at least 10 years before they are elected.
There is a seven-year citizenship requirement for the attorney general, secretary of state, auditor, treasurer, and commissioner of agriculture and industries.
Members of the Legislature have to be citizens at least three years.
This all seems utterly reasonable to me.
My initial reaction to all of this is that it is a stunt by Allen to get attention for his campaign, but it is a terrible commentary on both him and those who might vote for him that this is something he thinks is worth attention. I will confess that in any other time, I would assume that this would die in the legislature, and that is probably still the most likely outcome, but given the current political climate, I would hardly be shocked if it makes it to the ballot.
This kind of nationalist nonsense is a sign of our times and is a direct result of the Trumpian moment, which makes this intersect, at least in part, with my previous post.
