# US President & Citizenship **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 8, 2010, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-president-citizenship/549579 "2010-08-08T04:16:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2010, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-president-citizenship/549579/21 "2010-08-08T15:09:20Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > > [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > > > And – although I doubt it mattered – it should be noted that all of the earliest presidents were natives of what were later to become the United States. They were all born in the Colonies, none having, say, come over from Britain as a young adult. I wonder if one had, would it have become a snarky campaign issue. (Martin Van Buren, born in 1782 in upstate New York, was the first president to have been born an American.) > > Of the Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton was born on Nevis in the British West Indies. Although I don’t think he ever had presidential ambitions, I wonder how this would have been viewed with respect to natural born citizenship. Hamilton did have presidential ambitions. He was Washington’s right hand man and had hoped to succeed him as President. He eventually dropped out because of the Maria Reynolds affair. As far as I know, no issue was made of his West Indian background. But that could be because his campaign never got serious enough to matter. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2010, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-president-citizenship/549579/22 "2010-08-08T15:15:20Z")
Another citizenship issue was about the southern secession. I don’t recall his name but there was a politician who had presidential ambitions in the 1930’s. The issue was raised that he had been born in a Confederate state that had declared its independence at the time of his birth. The counterargument was that the United States government had never recognized the secession so anyone born in a Confederate state was still a natural born American citizen. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2010, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-president-citizenship/549579/23 "2010-08-08T15:29:34Z")
Quoth **Fubaya** : > [@](#): > > The Panama Canal zone is a little more odd than usual and McCain’ citizenship is still questionable. A judge could only say that it was “highly probable” that he had natural born citizenship as it’e not entirely clear which law he fell under when he was born. Right, and the only reason nobody ever raised a stink about it is that nobody really cares what the citizenship status of a presidential candidate is. All they care about is that they _seem_ American. It’s left as an exercise for the student why, to some folks, McCain seems American but Obama doesn’t. ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2010, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-president-citizenship/549579/24 "2010-08-08T15:47:08Z")
> [@MikeS](#): > > > [@Shagnasty](#): > > > > 1. Any child born on U.S. soil is a U.S. citizen. > > Minor quibble here: children born to foreign diplomats and such stationed in the U.S. do not gain U.S. citizenship. The key phrase in U.S. code is that “a person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” gets citizenship; anyone with “diplomatic immunity” is not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. Neither would children born to members\* of hostile armed forces occuping US soil. That issue hasn’t come up in quite some time. \*Presumably if one of the parents was an American citizen/resident (like a “comfort woman”) the child would be a US citizen. ---
**Author:** ![Driver8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5a626/32.png) [@Driver8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Driver8)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2010, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-president-citizenship/549579/25 "2010-08-08T16:21:42Z")
> [@tetranz](#): > > > [@Shagnasty](#): > > > > 1. The U.S. doesn’t prohibit dual citizenships but doesn’t acknowledge them either. It is just a guess but you could probably still be president if you revoke citizenship to the other country before running as long as you were born a U.S. citizen. > > I don’t get that. Why would someone need to revoke citizenship of the other country before being president? It might be a good move politically but I don’t think there is any legal requirement. I don’t think there is any requirement to renounce a foreign citizenship. The foreign citizenship is between you and the foreign government - it would be unfair if they provided no clear path for renunciation to hold this against you. It would be funny if North Korea could veto the results of an American presidential election simply by declaring the winner an North Korean citizen! ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2010, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-president-citizenship/549579/26 "2010-08-08T16:54:37Z")
> [@Captain\_Midnight](#): > > One birther argument is that the mother was 19 when she gave birth, and she could not grant citizenship because she was under the age of majority. I think that is a fairly flimsy argument. > [@flodnak](#): > > Again, it’s not that simple. At present, if both parents are US citizens, one has to have had a residence in the US before the child was born. If only one parent is a US citizen, she or he must have been “physically present” in the US for five years, at least two of them after her or his fourteenth birthday. Before 1986, those numbers were ten years, at least five after the fourteenth birthday. [Straight from the horse’s (or rather State Department’s) mouth.](http://travel.state.gov/law/info/info_609.html) _If_ Obama had been born in Kenya, then the argument goes that the age of his mother would have precluded her from passing on her citizenship; not because she was under the age of majority per se, but because she wasn’t old enough to have lived in the US for 5 years after her 14th birthday (even though she had lived her whole life there). Of course, the issue is moot since Obama was born in the US. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2010, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-president-citizenship/549579/27 "2010-08-08T16:58:30Z")
**flodnak** : I’m aware of the residency in the US requirement; however, my post was addressing the bit about “being born on base.” ---
**Author:** ![US\_Bureau\_of\_Labor\_Statistics](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/c2a13f/32.png) [@US\_Bureau\_of\_Labor\_Statistics](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/US_Bureau_of_Labor_Statistics)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2010, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-president-citizenship/549579/28 "2010-08-08T17:36:27Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > Okay, trying to address each of your points: There are _two_ ways to be born an American citizen, termed in lawyers’ Latin _ius soli_ and _ius sanguinis_. _Jus soli_ means “law of land,” and _jus sanguinis_ means “law of blood” in Latin. [Tmyk!](http://www.themoreyouknow.com/) e: or “right” of land/blood. Oops. ---
**Author:** ![anson2995](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c77e96/32.png) [@anson2995](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anson2995)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2010, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-president-citizenship/549579/29 "2010-08-08T22:50:10Z")
> [@Captain\_Midnight](#): > > Obama is the son of an American woman and a Kenyan man. What is in dispute is where he was physically born. There really isn’t any dispute about this at all, not a shred, other than in the imagination of some very persistent folks with delusions about reality. ---
**Author:** ![hadziin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/85f322/32.png) [@hadziin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hadziin)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2010, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-president-citizenship/549579/30 "2010-08-08T23:14:46Z")
> [@Captain\_Midnight](#): > > I wanted to start a thread about the “birther” thing, and what constitutes a “native born citizen”. > > Obama is the son of an American woman and a Kenyan man. What is in dispute is where he was physically born. > > Even if he was born in Kenya, does it matter physically where the child is born as long as one of the parents is an American citizen? One birther argument is that the mother was 19 when she gave birth, and she could not grant citizenship because she was under the age of majority. I think that is a fairly flimsy argument. > > Let’s say the father is an American but the mother was foreigner? > > Did the state of Hawaii give Obama a birth certificate, even though (for the sake of argument) he was born in Kenya? > > Does Kenya keep records on these things? > > For a time as a young teenager, Obama lived in Indonesia. Did he receive Indonesian citizenship? Since Obama was a minor at the time, did he have the right to terminate his citizenship? A quick check of Google states that Indonesia does not permit dual citizenship, and I doubt it did back in the 1980’s. If you were a child of American citizens who renounced their citizenship, do they have the right to speak for you? 1st - his mother never gave up her citizenship her Husband was Indonesian 2nd - if a family moves here and the parents become naturalized this does not automatically make their children citizens. They have to go through the process them selves. I would assume that this works the other way around. A child born in the USA is a citizen I would think that they would have to renounce it on their own. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2010, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-president-citizenship/549579/31 "2010-08-09T23:35:04Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > On the earliest Presidents, the Constitution, Article II, Section 1, beginning of paragraph 5: > > > [@](#): > > > > No person except a natural born citizen, **or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution** , shall be eligible to the office of President… Does this mean that an inhabitant of somewhere that becomes a State (or whatever) is eligible to become President to this day? Or are there restrictions? For instance, let’s suppose Vladimir Putin wants to become POTUS. Could he become a citizen of Elbonia, then when Elbonia becomes the 51st State run for President? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2010, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-president-citizenship/549579/32 "2010-08-09T23:46:51Z")
> [@](#): > > Does this mean that an inhabitant of somewhere that becomes a State (or whatever) is eligible to become President to this day? Or are there restrictions? For instance, let’s suppose Vladimir Putin wants to become POTUS. Could he become a citizen of Elbonia, then when Elbonia becomes the 51st State run for President? No, that was a onetime offer. It said that anyone who was living in the United States in 1789 was eligible to be elected President. Alexander Hamilton, who was born and raised in the West Indies, or Albert Gallatin, who was born and raised in Switzerland, would be examples of somebody covered by this. ---
**Author:** ![Superhal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Superhal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superhal)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-president-citizenship/549579/33 "2010-08-10T01:21:15Z")
I just wanted to point out a logical flaw in the OP: The debate is not about whether Obama was born in the country or not. The debate is why a group of crazy people refuse to believe the legally acceptable evidence that he was. If the debate is stated as above, then the answer is that it is impossible to provide any evidence that will satisfy these people, ever. In fact, if they applied their standard of proof to themselves, they wouldn’t be Americans either. The burden of proof is not on the people who think Obama was not born in the US. It is their burden of proof to prove that he wasn’t. Simply discounting the existing evidence does not create even the semblance of a reasonable argument. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-president-citizenship/549579/34 "2010-08-10T01:22:53Z")
> [@anson2995](#): > > > [@Captain\_Midnight](#): > > > > Obama is the son of an American woman and a Kenyan man. What is in dispute is where he was physically born. > > There really isn’t any dispute about this at all, not a shred, other than in the imagination of some very persistent folks with delusions about reality. Exactly. Who in their right mind believes that a white woman seven or eight months pregnant would embark on a flight halfway around the world - odds are in 1960 half that travel might be on propellor planes and taken more than twice as long as a similar flight today. All this to give birth in a foreign third-world country with limited medical care? Then rather than crow to the world about having given birth in the father’s country, she covers it up to the extent of managing to plant false birth announcements in Hawaii and even manage to get a birth certificate from there? Too bad this is GQ and snarky comments about political beliefs and intelligence correlations are not allowed! ==== Why would a presidential candidate want to renounce a foreign citizenship? Well consider that in 1960 JFK had to defend himself from accusations that a catholic could not be president - since catholics “have to do what the pope orders”. While someone with an accidental citizenship a la McCain-Panama might not feel the flack, someone with a serious heritage probably will; let’s say, a child of immigrants with frequent visits to the alternative motherland, or maybe the son of a non-citizen father. If delusional accusations of disloyalty can change the vote even 1% that might be sufficient to change some key states and that chance will inspire the deluded and the mercenary. Consider the case of Michael Ignatieff, who taught two decades or so at Harvard (why is Harvard always in politics??) before returning to Canada to take a run at the prime minstership as Liberal leader. The Conservatives ran ads against him suggesting that he was planning to quit and go back to his “real country” once he lost the next election (still here 6 years later). The successful cases are those like IIRC 2 old iron curtain european countries where having lived in the USA for decades was seen as a plus not a minus, or the singer supposedly running for president of Haiti who is “untainted by the endemic corruption” of regular politics. And there’s the occasional suggestion the rules hould be changed so Mr. Shriver-Schwarznegger can run for higher office. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-president-citizenship/549579/35 "2010-08-10T01:44:34Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > Does this mean that an inhabitant of somewhere that becomes a State (or whatever) is eligible to become President to this day? Or are there restrictions? For instance, let’s suppose Vladimir Putin wants to become POTUS. Could he become a citizen of Elbonia, then when Elbonia becomes the 51st State run for President? A related issue came up when Barry Goldwater was running for president. He was born in Phoenix when Arizona was still a territory. Note that he was actually born there, and wasn’t just an inhabitant, and it was already a territory of the US. ---
**Author:** ![qazwart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/5fc32e/32.png) [@qazwart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/qazwart)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-president-citizenship/549579/36 "2010-08-10T03:07:01Z")
Until the 14th amendment, there was no standard for U.S. citizenship. If you were a citizen of the state or territory, you were a U.S. citizen. It was up to the states to define their own terms for citizenship. The 14th amendment gave anyone who was born in the U.S. automatic U.S. citizenship and a citizen of whatever state they happen to reside in. The idea was to prevent the Southern states from defining state citizenship in such a term that the recently freed slaves would not be citizens. Until the late 19th century, the U.S. had no real immigration policy. If you could come here and get a job, you could. No one was really stopping you. It wasn’t until 1875 when the U.S setup an immigration service and strict quotas weren’t put in until the 1920s. The term “natural born citizen” in the Constitution has no real legal definition, but it is assumed to mean native born. At the time the Constitution was written, there was no clear definition of U.S. citizenship, and the writers of the Constitution didn’t feel that it was all that important. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 6:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-president-citizenship/549579/37 "2010-08-10T06:55:42Z")
Quoth **Little Nemo** : > [@](#): > > No, that was a onetime offer. It said that anyone who was living in the United States in 1789 was eligible to be elected President. Alexander Hamilton, who was born and raised in the West Indies, or Albert Gallatin, who was born and raised in Switzerland, would be examples of somebody covered by this. Actually, I think **Quartz** might be onto something there. If Elbonia becomes a US state in 2020, then they will, at that time, adopt the US Constitution. The clause in the Constitution may have been intended to just apply to the first generation of politicians while we were getting the country set up to begin with, but that’s not what it says. And you can make the same arguments that an Elbonian ought to become President that you could for someone like Hamilton. ---
**Author:** ![Hypnagogic\_Jerk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hypnagogic_jerk/32/4252_2.png) [@Hypnagogic\_Jerk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypnagogic_Jerk)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 7:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-president-citizenship/549579/38 "2010-08-10T07:25:07Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Actually, I think **Quartz** might be onto something there. If Elbonia becomes a US state in 2020, then they will, at that time, adopt the US Constitution. The clause in the Constitution may have been intended to just apply to the first generation of politicians while we were getting the country set up to begin with, but that’s not what it says. And you can make the same arguments that an Elbonian ought to become President that you could for someone like Hamilton. I guess that if the US annexes another territory and this territory becomes a state, at some point in the process a law will be passed making all residents of the territory US citizens, and “natural-born citizens” for the purpose of running for President. But you’re right, the question is: is such a special law even required to ensure that the citizens of this territory be natural-born citizens, or is it implicitely there in the Constitution? ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 7:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-president-citizenship/549579/39 "2010-08-10T07:37:23Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Quoth **Little Nemo** : > > > [@](#): > > > > No, that was a onetime offer. It said that anyone who was living in the United States in 1789 was eligible to be elected President. Alexander Hamilton, who was born and raised in the West Indies, or Albert Gallatin, who was born and raised in Switzerland, would be examples of somebody covered by this. > > Actually, I think **Quartz** might be onto something there. If Elbonia becomes a US state in 2020, then they will, at that time, adopt the US Constitution. The clause in the Constitution may have been intended to just apply to the first generation of politicians while we were getting the country set up to begin with, but that’s not what it says. And you can make the same arguments that an Elbonian ought to become President that you could for someone like Hamilton. I think not. In the context, the “adoption” of the constitution clearly refers to the adoption of the constitution _by the United States_, not by any particular (original or new) state. Article 3 deals with the admission of new states, and doesn’t refer to to them “adopting” the Constitution. I don’t think (though I could be corrected) that new states have “adopted” the Constitution as part of the formalities of admission, if only because most of them were territories immediately before admission, and so already subject to the U.S. Constitution. Note also that the original 13 states did not “adopt” the Constitution; they ratified it. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-president-citizenship/549579/40 "2010-08-10T14:12:39Z")
A couple of points: It is, amusingly, possible for someone to _become_ a “natural born citizen”, and some people in fact have, though the mechanism is a bit odd. In the summer of 1952, Congress passed and President Truman signed into law a measure granting citizenship to nationals of Puerto Rico – _retroactive to January 1941_. This meant that any kid born in Puerto Rico between 1941 and the first half of 1952, inclusive, had previously been, from the time of their birth, U.S. nationals, but as of the effective date of that law, they became U.S. citizens from the time of their birth. Certainly if the Bahamas decided to become a U.S. state, and in the negotiations for statehood, they induce Congress to adopt a measure granting American citizenship retroactively to citizens of the Bahamas retroactively to their birth, the same would be true for Bahamanians. 1. By the self-effectuating clause in Article VII, the U.S. Constitution became “adopted” on June 21, 1788, when New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify it, and the government established under it began effective operations the following March. _ **That** _ is the “time of adoption of this Constitution” referenced in Article II’s Presidential eligibility requirements. 2. While a part of the motivation behind defining U.S. citizenship in Amendment XIV was indeed a desire to keep the defeated Confederate states from setting a citizenship standards that would exclude the recently-freed former slaves, there was a second motivation not often recognized 150 years later. Remember that for patriotic men like Robert E. Lee and Philander Knox, their loyalty was to their **state**. They were Americans because they were Virginians, Louisianans, Georgians, etc. When their state, in their perspective, withdrew its membership in the Union, they were relieved of any loyalty to the national government. Amendment XIV substituted for that view the sense that there was an American citizenship which each person was inidividually entitled to – the modern perspective. Aside from a few lunatic-fringe Teabaggers, no one today looks on patriotism as predominantly to one’s state but rather to America, the 50-state Union. We miss entirely the point that good and decent men prior to the Civil War might see it in the opposite sense – that their loyalty was to Pennsylvania or Kentucky, not to the greater nation. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-president-citizenship/549579.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-president-citizenship/549579.md?page=3)