Superman’s Immigration Status

Kay Steiger reflects on a British actor playing Superman and fighting for truth, justice, and the American way:

The reaction among some comic fans has been aghast, especially since Superman is generally considered the quintessentially American superhero (that is, considered that way generally by white, male comic book characters who look pretty demographically similar to Superman himself). In fact, if you have some time, you should read this award-winning student paper (PDF) on how comic books in the stretch between the Great Depression and the Cold War change to adapt to American ideals that are popular at the time.

But it’s important to remember that Superman, while very representative of Americans in certain ways, might be even more representative than you might think: After all, Superman was an illegal immigrant — one of the 9.3 million estimated to be living in the United States today. These days, he wouldn’t even qualify for in-state tuition.

As those of us who recall Action Comics Annual #3 know, this is wrong. When a strange set of circumstances led to Superman becoming a candidate for president his immigration status was litigated with the Supreme Court determining that since he was transported to the planet earth in a kind of artificial womb, he’s actually a natural born citizen of the United States of America.

President Superman went on to eliminate the national debt by teaming up with Aquaman to unearth a buried stockpile of gold,* and to pursue an Obama-esque agenda of ridding the world of nuclear weapons. Some may say that because this was merely an alternate timeline, my observation is invalid. But the facts of Superman’s birth are the same in the “canonical” universe as in this branch of time, and the case of Uatu v. Lewis (1993, supra) firmly established that counterfactual legal precedents are binding on lower courts until explicitly overruled by the Supreme Court.