New York’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, exalted the city’s legacy of immigrants on Friday in a historically laden, ideological counterpoint to a US semiquincentennial address that was expected later in the day from Donald Trump – who has sought to deport immigrants en masse throughout his second presidency.
Speaking from behind a desk at New York’s city hall that belonged to the US’s first president, George Washington, and which itself is a century older than the Resolute desk in the White House, Mamdani was surrounded by naturalized citizens like himself as he listed the waves of immigrants who shaped the city.
“Hundreds of thousands of Irish immigrants arrived with stomachs aching from a famine manufactured by imperial cruelty,” Mamdani said. “Chinese sailors settled in what is today Chinatown. Millions more traveled under the Statue of Liberty and through Ellis Island. Jewish people escaping pogroms, Italians fleeing poverty. Syrians seeking economic opportunity.
Mamdani has not been a citizen when the constitution was adopted.
This is why it needs further consideration imo. To me, that comma means that these are the criteria for presidency once the constitution is adopted.If it means citizen at the time of adoption, would they not have omitted the comma to make it more clear?You know what, I stand corrected and learned more about this today. There was a case Hassan v. State of New Hampshire (2012) which already examined this and established natural born isn’t repealed by the 14th, plus some debates by Congress around the time the 14th passed that firms up that interpretation. I still think that comma is sus though.