The USATF Says All Americans are Not Equal...

luv2run wrote:

Few seriously do not think that Obama meets the constitutional requirements to be president.

Uh, are you familiar with the term "birther"?

I agree with the USATF. We need to keep "those people" out.

I personally think anyone who wears a turbine on their head, or doesn't believe in the baby Jesus, or even people who dislike country music, should be considered anti-American, and asked to either leave our great white American christian country, or face the consequences.

Amen.

Most things are complicated. This one is, to me, simple. Once you are a citizen of the United States, you have the same rights as any other US citizen*. US citizenship does not "phase in" over time. Citizen for a day or citizen for a century, you have the same rights.

So USATF should not discriminate on the basis of duration of citizenship. I have a hard time imagining that doing so is legal. Heck, if USATF asked me how long I had been a US citizen, I'd tell them it was none of their g-d- business.

That an international body (IAAF) does discriminate on the basis of duration of citizenship does not give a US organization (the USATF) the right to do so.

Personally, I think the IAAF should institute a simple rule that says once you have competed at the Olympics or the World Championships for one country, you cannot later compete at the Olympics or Worlds for a different country.

*=The one exception to the "all citizens are equal" rule is, of course, that the President and Vice-President must be natural-born citizens. But that's a pretty tiny exception, really.

Having recently naturalized africans in our US races is good as it prepares us for the world stage/raises the level of competition/makes us better so that maybe we won't always suck.

Tim Nelson 15k

Stephanie Rothstein 20k

Ben Bruce 5k

All were 2nd behind non-American born runners at the USA champs. They would have had a US title!

Cheese and Crackers.....

30yrs ago US championships were all comers meets. Anybody could show up and run. and they did. James Robinson out kicking Mike Boit? Awesome

Now they want to make sure you have a note from your mother? Why not let IAAF sort out championship eligibility, and let INS/ HS sort out citizenship. USATF can then worry about...oh I don't know...promotion of the sport?

from this side of the story wrote:

Tim Nelson 15k

Stephanie Rothstein 20k

Ben Bruce 5k

All were 2nd behind non-American born runners at the USA champs. They would have had a US title!

And for people like you may I point out that only Billy Mills and Jim Thorpe have won real Olympic medals....and they took Thorpe's away.

Look for more of this kind of thinly-veiled but legalized discrimination against minority groups of all kinds with the new GOP-controlled congress.

RuKiddingMe!, your an idiot. As to anyone who says having other people in the race will affect how it's run, I say that's only true if they are faster (which probably won't happen much), and even if it does it's good because at the world champs or olympics the americans will be facing people who are faster than they are.

Based on the logic of this rule (you must be eligible to run in the international event to run in the selection race) I propose that USATF adopt a rule that any person participating in a selection race must agree to represent the USA at the international event if they qualify. You want to run USATF XC Championship? Fine, if you run in qualifying position you must then run in World XC. If you don't, two year ineligibility to run in any more championship races.

Makes just as much sense as this current ruling.

USATF is a mess. Cannot do anything useful to promote Track and Field and now meddling with definitions of citizens, etc. Boy oh boy - someone and their lawyer plus the media will soon have fun with this

SomeActualData wrote:

This one is, to me, simple. Once you are a citizen of the United States, you have the same rights as any other US citizen. US citizenship does not "phase in" over time. Citizen for a day or citizen for a century, you have the same rights.

Personally, I think the IAAF should institute a simple rule that says once you have competed at the Olympics or the World Championships for one country, you cannot later compete at the Olympics or Worlds for a different country.

I like how you keep it "simple" - all US citizens have the same rights. But then you go on to add a "simple" rule about taking away a US citizen's right to compete for his/her new country.

You Americans don't realize for a minute how lucky you are to live in a free society with human rights and protections. You can live in Russia, China, Iran and are shot by police for no reasons at all. You can live in Israel and shot by Nazi-Israelis when running marathon, football, basketball. You can live in North Korea and starve to death.

You've got to stop calling the jews nazis. Pretty much everyone has to stop calling everyone else nazis. (there have been a few who nearly qualified in ruanda and similar, but I propose an organized systematic genocide of not fewer than several million people to qualify)

At best the israilis have killed and few thousand Palestinians. If they force the rest to live in bad conditions and are subjugated, well find a better metaphor. It makes you look illiterate, ignorant and hurts your cause.

Have a nice day!!!