Should the Olympiad teams only consist of national born players ?
I say so.
What is your view on this controversial issue ?
I don’t know of any country that has such a restriction. We would severely hurt our chances if we could not have, for example, Onischuk on the team. I’d love to have Kamsky too, if he would play.
We have some new young GMs who were born in this country. I wonder how long it will be before they push their way into the Olympiad team.
If the Olympiad were tomorrow that means out team would consist of:
Christensen
Hess
Robson
Benjamin
Friedel
Yasser I don’t think has played in US based events as a qualification of activity (assuming that’s a rule), though his FIDE rating card shows 1 tournament internationally, and I can’t remember if Nakamura was born in the US or not, though mind you Robson was born in Guam so the definition of national born player might need more clarification.
The next on the list would be Finegold as well.
Interesting that in the list above 3 of the 5 are newly minted GM’s and are young players, while two of them are part of the old guard.
No, but I think it’s reasonable to expect that they be made up of citizens, either native-born or naturalized. (I have no idea how many players representing the United States are U.S. citizens and how many aren’t. It just seems like a reasonable standard.)
If non-citizens are playing on the U.S. team, I don’t think anyone would be out of line to refer to them as ringers. Such a team wouldn’t accurately represent the kind of chess talent that the United States produces – essentially, we’d be taking credit for other nations’ patronage of the game. At least in the case of naturalized citizens, we can make the claim that the United States, while not actually nurturing developing chess players, at least has sufficient other attributes to earn the commitment of already-developed ones. But if we’re represented by players who are merely resident non-citizens, we can’t even claim that much.
Seirawan would not qualify; he was born in Damascus, Syria.
This has come up several times before, notably during the Tony Miles business. My personal objection to it is that, if such a policy were universally adopted, it would make players serfs of their federations. FIDE has already taken some steps in that direction (e.g., those preposterous fees for changing federations), but that doesn’t make it right.
Would such a distinction between classes of US citizens even be legal under civil rights statutes?
Probably not. Although nation of physical birth, jus soli, is not, IIRC, a suspect category per the Supremes.
Should we allow persons with dual citizenship to represent us?
How would we verify someone’s US citizenship or residency status, much less whether that person was born in the USA?
Can we require American born players to play for us? Of course not! I doubt Fabiano Caruana would come back.
I-9.
As a German, this is a familiar topic. The German Olympiad team consisted of one German born player (Gustafsson), the rest saw the light of the world within the boundaries of the former USSR. Glancing over the team lists of the Olympiad it appears that the problem is limited to the US and the German team. A few teams have one or two players that are foreign born. It does not feel right but I doubt legal options are the proper choice. In the case of the US it is particularly difficult to recommend a better solutions. After all, it is a young country, that got populated by immigrants. Germany for sure should and can do better. But then it is a mirror image of the state of the team championships. The champions of recent years were essentially devoid of Germans starting with Luebeck, Bremen and now Baden-Baden. Essentially, anyone with sufficient cash can buy the right team together and call himself German champion.
Is Caruana likely to play for Italy?
People may not recall that some years ago Loren Schmidt, born and raised in Nebraska, played on the Japan Olympiad team in Greece.
How old was Alexei Shirov when he learned Spanish? I don’t think he learned it from his mother.
Has Russia / USSR ever had a foreign born player on their Olympiad team? China?
Keres was not born in the Soviet Union. I wonder if he played for them in the Olympiad.
If a person makes his residence in the United States, based on an alien residence card or a student visa, it is certainly possible that he/she has a talent developed in this country. And there are certainly youngsters here solely on account of their parents’ residence (whether legal or not) in this country.
What a wonderful topic and such a lively discussion! All Things Chess indeed!
In my opinion, it’s not enough to restrict players not born in the US from playing on the USA Olympiad team. We also have to restrict players with at least one of their parents not born in this country (sorry, Bobby Fischer). The key point here is that while some Russki might sneak in here in their mother’s womb and be born in the US, but as every honest to goodness USCF member knows, they will never be imbued with the true American spirit by parents who were not necessarily born in this Lord’s Beloved Cradle of Democracy. Not to mention, they will still have weird, unpronounceable names.
Nice try, Guam!
Michael Langer
b. Moscow, Soviet Union.
There are those who will disagree about unpronounceable names. A person had a job interview scheduled with a man of Polish background. He took the name to a Polish-speaking friend and explained that he wanted to make a good impression, so would the friend please tell him how to pronounce that name. The Polish-speaker took one look at the piece of paper on which the name was written. “Dummy!” he said. “You pronounce it just the way it’s written!”
I guess if there was a restriction to players only born in the US then I am still out of luck after I gain 700 rating points 
. I was born in Germany when my dad (born in IL) proposed to my mom (born in IL) and then got married when he was drafted into the army and sent overseas in the '50s (with my mom joining him). I’m eligible to become president of the US, but I guess I would not be to play for the US in the Olympiad.