Up front, I believe Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, as he has always claimed, and that the people insisting he wasn’t are, by and large, nut jobs.
But for the sake of argument, assume he was born elsewhere, say, in Indonesia.
His mother was a native born citizen of the USA. So, even IF he’d been born elsewhere, wouldn’t he be legally as American as any of us, due to his mother’s citizenship?
This question was addressed many times in the context of McCain’s birth to American parents outside the US. If you catch the search function on a good day, it might call up some of those threads.
Basically, the issue is that the Constitution requires that a President be a “natural-born citizen,” and the law is not settled as to what that phrase really means. Presumably not all citizens are natural-born citizens (otherwise the qualification would not be necessary). It’s also not necessarily true that all people who were citizens from birth would be natural-born citizens: Congress has the authority to pass a statute defining who is a “citizen,” but no Congressional statute has the authority to determine or affect what the Constitution means by “natural-born citizen.” And no court has ever had to rule definitively on what that Constitutional meaning actually is, so it’s ultimately an open, and somewhat unanswerable, question.
Yes he would be a legal citizen but the office of president requires the person be a “natural-born citizen” and that’s actually not very well defined.
McCain had this problem for real, and scholars debated it for a long time until a senate resolution declared him a natural born citizen.
Depends upon the laws that were in effect at the TIME of Obamas birth. Citizenship laws are changed.
What were the laws in 1961?
Congress has passed a law defining what is meant by “natural born citizen.” The Naturalization Act of 1790 said that “the children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens: Provided, That the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States.” That statute is no longer in effect, but as far as I know there’s nothing stopping Congress from weighing in on the issue once again.
As someone who has never voted for a Democrat for any office in his life, I am astounded at the continuing attempt to bring this crapola up. Obama is the next President. I wish him luck, and fear that he is as vastly underqualified as the last person to hold the office.
Looking at the circumstances of Obama’s birth: his mother was a US citizen, aged 18, who had lived in the US her entire life. His father was not a US citizen. Under current law, a child born to similar parents would be a US citizen no matter where in the world he was born. This is because current US law says that a child born outside the US to one American citizen parent is a citizen if that parent has lived in the US for at least five years, at least two of them after his or her 14th birthday.
But Obama was born in 1961. At that time the law was different. At that time, the law said that the American citizen parent had to have lived in the US for at least ten years, at least five of them after his or her 14th birthday. An 18 year old obviously can’t have met that requirement, as she hadn’t yet been alive for five years after her fourteenth birthday. So if it had been true that she had travelled to Kenya and given birth there, then no, her son would not have been an American citizen from birth.
Of course, this would have been discovered long ago, like when the young Barack needed a passport to travel to Indonesia with his mother and stepfather…
The conspiracy-theory allegations are that (1) Barack was born in Kenya, and (2) his mother returned to Hawaii shortly after to register him as if he been born in Hawaii. If those allegations are true, then that false birth certificate would have been enough in practice to get him a passport, etc. However, it might be possible to prove those allegations: if it were, then presumably his US passport would be cancelled, and he would be declared ineligible to hold office as President. Of course, the onus is on them to prove those allegations, not on Barack to refute them.
Except that by running for the office of President, he has claimed to be eligible for that office. Therefore he has claimed to be a natural born citizen. As such, it is most certainly his burden and duty to prove that his assertion is true. The only document which can legally establish this would be his birth certificate, which contrary to popular belief, he continues to withhold. A certificate of live birth is not legally or evidentially sufficient to establish place of birth or citizenship.
Make of it what you will. I have no idea why he has repeatedly refused to furnish his birth certificate, but it doesn’t really matter. It’s his responsibility to do so.
He has established his citizenship to to the satisfaction of all relevant legal authorities and all Americans except a few whackos. A Certificate of Live Birth is equivalent to a Birth Certificate. See Snopes.
This board has certainly gone downhill. Whatever happened to any respect for the Straight Dope.
Jeez. Signing out. Glad I didn’t renew.
The silly legend has been debunked so many times on this message board it’s really getting tiresome, but I guess I may as well go through the motions.
A “Certificate of live birth” IS a birth certificate. Here it is:
http://msgboard.snopes.com/politics/graphics/birth.jpg
What else do you want besides an official document from the State of Hawaii saying “This person was born here”?
It is also worth noting the State of Hawaii has looked into the matter and confirmed the documentation of Obama’s birth is in order.
Ultimately, there are two questions:
Is Obama a citizen? The fact that he got a US passport proves that. You must prove citizenship to get one. Whatever was provided to the passport office – presumably, the same document that Hawaii provided to the campaign – was good enough to get a passport. Since the State Department accepted such a document as proof of citizenship, then it is legal proof of such.
Was he naturalized? And the answer is “no.” No one has ever suggested he has gotten a naturalization certificate.
Thus, as a citizen (#1) and being one without undergoing naturalization (#2), he must be a natural born citizen.
The term has never been defined but the term “natural born,” basically comes down to this,
A person who is a citizen of the United States and didn’t have to take out any papers to achieve this.
Thus he is a citizen naturally and didn’t go through any legal process to achieve this.
Even if Obama had been born in Australia he’d be a natural born citizen due to his mother.
Of course the Supreme Court would have to decide if the issue arose and they don’t issue an opinion BEFORE the fact. So we’d have to have a person who is a real test case.
But most lkely the SCOTUS would call it a “poltical thing,” and it’s doubtful the SCOTUS would issue a descsion against the will of the electorate, unless it was totally without merit. Like if Governor Arnold of California was elected.
Not with the law as it was in 1961, as pointed out by flodnak. His mother was too young to have satisfied the legal requirements then.
You’re completely wrong. Nobody is required to prove that baseless accusations against them are incorrect. Anyone who thinks they have evidence that Obama was born in Kenya or Indonesia or Mars could step forward and produce it. But until there’s evidence on the table, Obama is not obligated to do anything to argue against rumors.
As for claiming to be eligible for office, the same claim was presumedly made by Bush, Clinton, Reagan, Carter, etc. Were any of them required to prove it?
:smack:
This is GQ not GD, but I think I’m within the bounds of decorum to say that the above is nothing more than the sort of uniformed clap trap that fuels all conspiracy theories. After the first two sentences, everything is absolutely and unequivocably an inaccurate statement of fact.
Is there an obligation for a candidate to affirmatively prove his eligibility? Morally, perhaps, but legally, clearly not. The constitution makes no such requirement, and neither do any of the 50 states, each of whom set their own rules for candidate’s getting on the ballot.
A birth certificate is the only document that proves citizenship? Sez you. Neither the state of Hawaii nor the federal government agree.
If you’re going to claim that rules have not been followed, you ought to have some inkling about what those rules actually are. Obama followed the rules.
If I were a registered Democrat, I suppose I’d be happy that some element of the Right is sidetracked by such nonsense… but I don’t wait to stray out of GQ territory…
But again, Congress cannot change the meaning of the Constitution. The views of the Congress of 1790 are probably good evidence for what the framers of the Constitution intended by “natural-born citizen,” but a court would be unlikely to deem them conclusive (indeed, depending on one’s views about how the Constitution should be interpreted, the views of the framers may not be conclusive either).
Thus, if Congress passes a statute stating that “natural-born citizen” = X+Y, but then the Supreme Court, based on some other reasoning, decides that “natural-born citizen” = X but not Y, then the Congressional statute would almost certainly be held unconstitutional and ineffective to grant natural-born citizen status to anyone who is within category Y but not X. (Similarly, Congress could not limit natural-born citizen status to something more narrow than the Constitution contemplates).
None of this is meant to imply any doubt on my part as to Obama’s status, which I consider to be wholly beyond question, in political and practical terms. I’m just trying to lay out why it’s not really possible to give a rock-solid legal answer.
“…None of this is meant to imply any doubt on my part as to Obama’s status, which I consider to be wholly beyond question, in political and practical terms. I’m just trying to lay out why it’s not really possible to give a rock-solid legal answer.”
I totally agree. Even though I think the election was a disaster for the USA.
Ironically, the same situation now exists with the appointment of Burris to the senate. Legal? Illegal? Letter of the law? Spirit of the law?..
[Moderator note]
Let’s leave out the political commentary, which is inappropriate for GQ.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator