Will Supreme Court take case on Obama's citizenship?
On December 3, 2008 an article was posted to a message board about a possible case involving Obama's citizenship, since some people claimed he was born in Kenya and his father was a foreigner. The link to the original article doesn't work, but here is an excerpt:
The U.S. Supreme Court will consider Friday whether to take up a lawsuit challenging President-elect Barack Obama's U.S. citizenship, a continuation of a New Jersey case embraced by many opponents of Obama's election.On December 4th I asked a question about Section 1 of Article Two of the United States Constitution:
Does the second part of the clause only apply to people born before 1787?
Then I wrote this: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.
Mitt Romney's father wanted to run for President and this issue was brought up because he was born in Mexico and I briefly recall hearing about it for John McCain. I read through the Constitution this summer and my initial understanding was that of course someone could run for President born elsewhere as long as they are a legal citizen, however you don't want non-Americans or former non-Americans becoming President. I knew an American guy in high school who was born in Japan (possibly on a military base).Someone said:
I think this attorney, Berg, who is one of the supposedly more credible of those fighting this battle, is actually a Democrat. I don't know his political beliefs, though.Another person added:
And gave money to "The One" though I don't know whether the motives were altruistic or not...or to obtain standing in a legal fight.I responded with:
I heard he was a supporter of Clinton.Then I wrote:
In college I knew a woman who thought she was a legal citizen, because her parents lied to her; one was from Germany and the other from Venezuela. She went on a trip to Mexico and when she tried to get back home, the border patrol said sorry you are not a citizen. She did get back, but I'm not sure how, perhaps because she was a student.Someone responded to the question I posted earlier with this:
The key is the natural-born part, which I take to mean is that you had to have American citizenship conferred at birth. You cannot have been a naturalized citizen.Since the Constitution does not define "natural born Citizen", I proposed a definition in my book:
The law on the books at the time of Obama's birth was the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1952. I don't have access to our online law library at work here, but the pertinent point of the 1952 act is that if you have only one parent who is a U.S. citizen (Barack Obama, Sr. was a Kenyan citizen, Ann Dunham was a natural-born U.S. citizen) and you are born outside U.S. jurisdiction (alleged to be the case where Berg et al. say he was born in Kenya, the official story being he was born in Honolulu), then that parent must have resided 5 years in the U.S. after attaining the age of 14 in order to confer natural U.S. citizenship at birth (note that current law states 2 years). The problem there is Ann Dunham was three months shy of her 19th birthday when she gave birth to Barack Jr. By a literal reading of the law and assuming the Berg contention that he was born in Kenya is true, Barack Obama Jr. could be not be a natural-born U.S. citizen.
Berg also makes additional contentions, which, in addition to (a) above, boil down to (b) His stepfather, whatshisname Soetoro legally adopted or claimed Barack as his child in Indonesia, and in doing so, forfeited any claim to U.S. citizenship Barack may have had and (c) at the age of 20, Barack allegedly passed through Indonesia en route to Pakistan and other destinations and renewed his Indonesian passport, and in doing so, swore an oath to a foreign government (dual citizenship not being recognized by either nation) and thus again nullified any American citizenship in doing so. I have not really looked at (b) and (c) to see if they hold any water.
Any child born to two American parents shall be granted citizenship regardless of place of birth. Any child born to one American parent shall be granted citizenship as long as he or she is born in one of the States or the District. Congress shall have the power to determine immigration and citizenship requirements for everyone else.
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