# Is Barack Obama British by right of birth? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 1, 2011, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-barack-obama-british-by-right-of-birth/580343 "2011-05-01T02:10:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Muffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muffin/32/4341_2.png) [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2011, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-barack-obama-british-by-right-of-birth/580343/21 "2011-05-01T20:05:25Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > Hawaii is not part of the Continental US; however, it is part of the US. Osama never provided satisfactory proof that it was. ---
**Author:** ![Duckster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duckster/32/1244_2.png) [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2011, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-barack-obama-british-by-right-of-birth/580343/22 "2011-05-02T00:43:04Z")
> [@Muffin](#): > > Osama never provided satisfactory proof that it was. Obama can play his Trump card. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2011, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-barack-obama-british-by-right-of-birth/580343/23 "2011-05-02T01:10:40Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > 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. Are you saying he could be a British peon? Hell, if the war went the other way we’d ALL be British peons!. ---
**Author:** ![A.Gwilliam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ea5d25/32.png) [@A.Gwilliam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/A.Gwilliam)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2011, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-barack-obama-british-by-right-of-birth/580343/24 "2011-06-01T23:14:06Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > The peonage of the British Empire were subject, not citizens. **Everyone** in the British Empire, except for the King/Queen, was a “subject”. > [@](#): > > Citizen was a right that followed from the grandfather in those days, IIRC. Birth in a British colony automatically conferred the status of British subject (subsequently “Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies”), with trivial exceptions\*. This was **exactly** the same status as for a person born in the United Kingdom. Neither changed until the _British Nationality Act 1981_ came into operation. - Basically, the children of accredited foreign diplomats. > [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > 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.” Depending on exactly where he was born in Kenya, and also upon his parentage, there’s a slim chance that he wasn’t a British subject, but rather a “British protected person”. This is because the ten-mile-wide Coastal Strip (the “Protectorate of Kenya”) was not formally British territory, even though it was administered as part of the Colony of Kenya. > [@](#): > > 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.) Also excepted from the loss of British citizenship were individuals with ties to another British colony. ---
**Author:** ![A.Gwilliam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ea5d25/32.png) [@A.Gwilliam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/A.Gwilliam)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2011, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-barack-obama-british-by-right-of-birth/580343/25 "2011-06-01T23:16:44Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > 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.) A special category of British nationality was created for Hong Kong, so as to reassure the colony’s residents after the Tiananmen Square massacre. I don’t think anyone other than the British government recognised this status! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2011, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-barack-obama-british-by-right-of-birth/580343/26 "2011-06-02T13:43:34Z")
> [@](#): > > demand a British passport simply by walking into the proper bureau and presenting his birth certificate? Firstly, you don’t ‘demand’ a passport from anyone, you ask nicely and fill out the required paperwork, provide required documentation, pay the fee and wait and wait. Secondly, I don’t think there is a more complicated passport application than the British. I looked into getting a British passport when I first started traveling (my Dad was born in Manchester - by accident), and was shocked at how complicated it was. Understandably since so much of the world was once under their dominion, making zillions of persons, subjects/citizens. Seriously, check out the form - ‘if you were born in the Isle of Mann, after such-and-such a date, if you were born in Northern Ireland before…’, and on and on with almost every former colony. I had to send to England for a certified copy of my Dad’s birth certificate, which was expensive and took a long time, plus source proof of their marriage, my original long form birth document, etc. In the end, I didn’t have the endurance to go the distance for very little advantage to me, so I just gave up completely! ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2011, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-barack-obama-british-by-right-of-birth/580343/27 "2011-06-02T14:00:42Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#): > > 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. Yes. I was born a British subject in 1945, and in 1947 I (together with my British-subject parents) entered the United Kingdom. Of course, I don’t remember that, but my parents would just have had to show their passports – one issued by the U.K. government, and the other issued by the Commonwealth of Australia. I would have been a name on my mother’s passport, and would have entered the U.K. with no visa, as a British subject. On 26th January 1949, through no action of my own or of my parents, and without knowing it at the time, I became an Australian citizen, but still a British subject in Australian and U.K. law. On 1st January 1983 I ceased to be a British subject under U.K. law. On 1st May 1987 I ceased to be a British subject under Australian law. Again, this was through no action on my part, but because of acts of the U.K. and Australian parliaments. So now, when I enter the U.K., I’m treated as a foreigner, i.e., I have to go to the long and slow immigration queue reserved for non-EU citizens. (But I can still enter as a visitor without a visa.) ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Panda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2011, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-barack-obama-british-by-right-of-birth/580343/28 "2011-06-02T14:08:34Z")
> [@Muffin](#): > > 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! Shouldn’t we at least see if he floats first? > [@BigT](#): > > International law abhors a stateless person. Hence the burning. ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2011, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-barack-obama-british-by-right-of-birth/580343/29 "2011-06-02T14:17:17Z")
> [@Darth\_Panda](#): > > Shouldn’t we at least see if he floats first? That would mean he was made out of wood. > [@Darth\_Panda](#): > > Hence the burning. No, let’s make a bridge out of him. At least he do one useful thing then. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-barack-obama-british-by-right-of-birth/580343.md?page=1)