Immigration Law

IMMIGRANT OF THE DAY: SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN

By Greg Siskind

If John McCain becomes President, he will be the first one born in another country. Yes, you read that correctly. John McCain was born in Panama. More precisely, he was born in the Panama Canal Zone in a US Navy hospital to a US citizen mother and father (his dad was in the US Navy stationed there). According to Ted Olsen, the nation's Solicitor General, that makes McCain eligible to be President (which is the correct view, in my opinion). There is a provision in the Constitution limiting the presidency to natural born citizens and this is usually incorrectly interpreted as meaning you have to be born in the US. That's not really true. Naturalized citizens cannot become President, but anyone entitled to claim citizenship at birth should be eligible.

So McCain is not really an immigrant in the technical sense since his parents are both Americans and he was a citizen at his birth. But maybe this explains why he shows empathy with immigrants and I'm sure he wouldn't mind the honor of being named today's Immigrant of the Day.

Full post as published by Greg Siskind's Blog on February 29, 2008 (boomark / email).