by Matthew Hay Brown
This just in: John McCain, born though he was in the Panama Canal Zone, meets the citizenship test to serve in the White House.
So says the Cabinet secretary charged with enforcing federal immigration law.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff was responding today to a question from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy about McCain’s status, in light of the constitutional stipulation that “No Person except a natural born Citizen … shall be eligible to the Office of President.”
McCain, the son of a Naval officer, was born in 1936 to American parents in the Canal Zone, which was then under U.S. control.
“We’ve had some question on this committee to have a special law passed, declaring that Senator McCain was born in the Panama Canal, that he meets the constitutional requirement to be president,” Leahy said. “I fully believe he does. I’ve never had any question in my mind that he meets our constitutional requirement.
“You’re a former federal judge,” he told Chertoff. “You’re the head of the agency that executes federal immigration law. Do you have any doubt in your mind? I have none in mine. Do you have any doubt in your mind that he’s constitutionally eligible to become president?”
Chertoff kept his answer brief: “My assumption and my understanding is that if you were born of American parents, you are a natural-born American citizen.”Debate about the meaning of the constitutional requirement has arisen from time to time, as when Mitt’s father George Romney (born in Mexico) sought the Republican nomination for president in 1968, and when Barry Goldwater (Arizona Territory, pre-statehood) ran for president in 1964.
The Canadian birth of Franklin Roosevelt Jr. may have limited his chances at following his father to the White House. Lowell Weicker, born in Paris to American parents, sought legal advice before his 1980 bid for the GOP nomination.