Obama Place of Birth Not The Issue, Eligibility Is

A recent poll shows that 47% of southerners question whether Obama was born in the U.S. That’s the wrong question. Obama was probably born in Honolulu, but he is still not a natural born citizen. Read the next 550 words and decide for yourself.

Article II of the Constitution says that, “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”.

But what does it mean to be a “Natural Born Citizen”? Since its passage in 1868 the 14th amendment is the supreme law of the land for citizenship matters. It reads; “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

Senator Jacob M. Howard of Michigan—the author of the citizenship clause—described the “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” clause as excluding “persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers.” Howard said the word "jurisdiction" meant the United States possessed a “full and complete jurisdiction” over the person described in the amendment. That meaning would deny citizenship by birth to a person who had divided loyalties.

Obama’s father was a foreign national (Kenya was a possession of England at the time) and was in Hawaii under a commission from his government to get an education and go back to Kenya to serve in the government. He did that. He was in the United States as an agent of a foreign government, and therefore any children born here would not be under the “full and complete jurisdiction” of the United States. The British Nationality Act of 1848 also claimed jurisdiction over the offspring of their nationals abroad. Such children may become “naturalized” citizens of the United States, but they are not “natural born citizens”.

Thomas Lifson reports that there is another serious challenge to Obama’s eligibility regarding his time in Indonesia as Barry Soetoro. He writes, “The records of the Catholic school Obama/Soetoro attended for three years identify him as a citizen of Indonesia. Thus Obama probably obtained Indonesian citizenship through his adoption by Soetoro in Hawaii. That inference is bolstered by the 1980 divorce submission of Ann Dunham and Lolo Soetoro, filed in Hawaii state court. It said "the parties" (Ann and Lolo) had a child (name not given) who was no longer a minor (Obama was 19 at the time). If Soetoro had not adopted Obama, there would have been no basis for the couple to refer to Obama as their child - he'd have been only Ann Dunham's child.”

Indonesia did not permit dual citizenship until 2007. Under Indonesian law at the time, an Indonesian man who adopted a child under six years old (Obama was four or five) made that child an Indonesian citizen. There are provisions in U.S. law for such children to re-claim their U.S. citizenship as naturalized, not natural born, citizens once they reach age of majority. If Obama ever completed the paperwork to do this, we have no record of it, and again this would only make him a naturalized, not natural born, citizen of our country.

Obama travelled to Pakistan in 1981 at a time when U.S. Citizens were denied travel there. What country’s passport did he use? We don’t know, as Obama has sealed his passport records. Are the rumors that he attended Occidental College with the help of a foreign student aid program true? We don’t know. Obama has sealed all of those records too.