That is to say; now that we’ve seen that his father indeed had a British citizenship on the newly released long form birth certificate, could the President of the United States demand a British passport simply by walking into the proper bureau and presenting his birth certificate?
British citizen or British subject? There’s a difference.
No, because when Kenya became independent his father would have lost British citizenship and gained Kenyan citizenship.
–Is he eligible to hold a British Passport.
The peonage of the British Empire were subject, not citizens. They could not just land on British shores on a whim and dilute the gene pool. Citizen was a right that followed from the grandfather in those days, IIRC.
–Yes, but if he himself was recognized as a British citizen (or subject) at birth, I don’t see how the ensueing legal status of his father could impact that. Our children are both American and French citizens by right of their birth. If either my French wife or my American self changed our citizenship, it would not, indeed could not affect that of our children.
–Is Barack Obama eligible to hold a British Passport?
No, according to Factcheck.org, he’s not eligible to hold a British or a Kenyan passport. He acquired Kenyan citizenship in 1963 when Kenya became independent, but then lost it because he didn’t renounce his US citizenship by the time he became 23.
Thank you.
Whereas if his father had been a citizen of Britain (not a subject) IIRC he would not have lost his right?
I have a British passport because my father (and mother) were British citizens born in Britain.
Barack Obama, Sr. was born in 1938 in Kenya. He would have been born then as a “British Subject.” In 1948 he would have been reclassified as a “Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies.”
When Kenya became independent in the 1960s, anyone who was a “Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies” stopped being one, and instead became Kenyan citizens.
The only individuals from Kenya who would not have automatically lost their British citizenship would have been individuals who were born in Kenya but had strong ties to the British isles at the time of the change (meaning they had permanent residence in or worked there.)
As it were, President Obama was born in 1961 in Hawaii, to a father who was a “Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies” because that was essentially what everyone who was under British rule at that time was classified as if they weren’t still classified as “British Subject.” President Obama’s father not only would have been eligible for a genuine British Passport, he would have actually had to have had one since he obviously traveled outside Kenya and Kenya was not an independent country when he traveled to the United States.
At that precise moment if Barack Obama, Sr. had become his son’s guardian and brought him back to Kenya prior to 1963, it’s definitely possible Barack Obama, Jr. could have at that point received a British passport. However, the moment 1963 hit, since Barack Obama, Sr., and hypothetically Kenyan-raised Barack Obama, Jr. were living in Kenya and had no attachment to the British isles they would have lost their status as “CUKC” and would have no longer been entitled to British passports and would not be called British citizens by anyone.
So right there is the answer: at birth Obama theoretically could have received a British passport since he was the son of a Kenyan and he could have been issues such a passport especially if his father had taken him back to Kenya at that point for any reason. Since that never happened, Obama did not receive one, and by the time Obama did visit Kenya it was no longer part of the British Empire. Under the laws of independent Kenya Obama could have received a Kenyan citizenship and become a Kenyan citizen, but he would have had to have renounced his American citizenship prior to age 23, which he never did. So right now the only passport Barack Obama, Jr. is entitled to hold is a United States Passport.
So if he lost his right to a UK passport, and lost his right to a Kenyan passport, and has not been able to prove his being born on the continental USA, then he is stateless, and stateless people are under the UN, and therefore are communists. Burn him!
No, I believe that, if he were not a citizen of the U.S., there wouldn’t be a U.S. citizenship to denounce, and the Kenyan rule would not apply. I assume he’d have to prove he was never a U.S. citizen, though.
International law abhors a stateless person.
No, man, stateless people are obviously terrorists. Since all terrorists work together, Obama is obviously working for Osama Bin Laden. Why isn’t this clear to you? What are you hiding? Why do you hate America?
Actually, until some point in the late 1950s/early 1960s or so, I believe that’s exactly what they could do- show up in England, say “Hello, I’m from one of the Colonies and I’m going to live here now.”
The idea of “Citizenship” in its modern sense is a lot more recent that many people realise- there was no such thing as Australian Citizenship before about 1949 or thereabouts, for example, even though Australia became a Commonwealth in 1901.
President Obama is a REAL AMERICAN ™
I loved the way he dealt with Trump.
Correct. Prior to the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962, everyone connected to the UK or a British territory was a Citizen of the UK and Colonies, and all of them had the rights to live in the UK. The rules were increasingly tightened since then, and ultimately resulted in the British Nationality Act 1981, which formally divided British nationality into multiple classes.
Hawaii is not part of the Continental US; however, it is part of the US.
Thirty-odd years ago a firm wanted to send six engineers (include septimus tagging along as a contractor) for a week’s work in Japan. Visas were obtained by all – except our Hongkongian, who was allegedly told by the travel agent that as a British subject he didn’t require a visa to enter Japan.
We sprawled for hours at Narita waiting for Japanese Immigration finally to allow our Hongkongian to spend the night in a hotel, promising to exit first thing in the morning. His passport had a picture of Elizabeth Regina II, but his wasn’t the type that Japan called a British passport. (I imagine he knew this all along, and was just getting a company-paid trans-Pacific round-trip. I did run into him, by chance, in Macao a week later.)