Is Luis Fortuno eligible to be US President?

[John F Kennedy III]

Is Luis Fortuno eligible to be US President?

[compromise]

Yes, he is a natural born citizen. It is very unlikely he will run though as he has no home state.

[matt0611]

I don't see why not. Congress granted citizenship to the people of Puerto Rico in 1917, so.

[aGameOfThrones]

No.

[Eric21ND]

He's a citizen.

[MelissaWV]

No, because he has screwed up royally.

[John F Kennedy III]

No, because he has screwed up royally.

How did he screw up?

[Confederate]

Fortuño is not eligible to be vice president/president. There is a 14 year US residency requirement to be president (and therefor vice president as well) and Fortuño does not meet it. Puerto Rico does not count as the US for this purpose.


No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

An April 2000 report by the Congressional Research Service, asserts that citizens born in Puerto Rico are legally defined as natural born citizens and are therefore eligible to be elected President, provided they meet qualifications of age and 14 years residence within the United States. According to this report, residence in Puerto Rico and U.S. territories and possessions does not qualify as residence within the United States for these purposes.

http://www.senate.gov/reference/resources/pdf/RL30527.pdf/

Even if Puerto Rico became a state before 2016, he still wouldn't be eligible.

He'd only have the time since Puerto Rico became a state that counts as residency within the US. The time before would still count as residency in an unincorporated (that being the key) territory.

There was talk about Goldwater being ineligible to run for president because he was born in Arizona before it became a state, but he was deemed eligible because the Arizona Territory was an incorporated US territory, as opposed to PR, Guam, and the Virgin Islands, which are unincorporated.

Interestingly, Puerto Rico may be a US possession, but it is an unincorporated territory and therefore the US Constitution does not automatically apply in its entirety in unincorporated territories, something established in the SCOTUS Insular Cases and reaffirmed by Harris v Rosario (1980). As an unincorporated territory, the provisions of the Constitution and in some cases citizenship have been extended onto the people, not the territory itself by extending the protections under the privileges and immunity clause to that territory (extended to Puerto Rico by act of Congress in 1947).

[John F Kennedy III]

+rep sir

[Matt Collins]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qt0dQy0xXH8

[Confederate]

How does that video answer the OP's question, Matt?