Obama Birth Rumors

Ed Morrissey asks:

Was Barack Obama born in Hawaii or somewhere else, or did he just change a name?

Ed cites Jim Geraghty, who thinks that the Obama Campaign’s failure to produce the candidate’s birth certificate has caused these rumors to fly:

1. Obama was not born in the US, but in Kenya.
2. Obama’s middle name was Mohammed, not Hussein (but then why change it to another Arabic name?)
3. His real first name is “Barry”.

Of these, only one is serious.

My first instinct is to call Bravo Sierra on this story, since it’s most likely an ever-mutating product of the malignant imagination of a guy named Kenneth Lamb who saw fit to make up lies about my tribe—the same tribe that Obama stems from. Lamb claims that our tribe is an Arab tribe. Yes, really. The goal in creating this fiction is to refute the idea that Obama, whose mother was a white American, is a “legal” “African American,” whatever the heck that is. (I suppose that, by this logic, I am half “African American” since my mother is a black American.)

See the guy on the right? That’s my father, journalist Philip Ochieng, a Kenyan Luo like the senior Barack Obama. The two were also friends (something which Father's beginning to rue since he's being inundated by American media requests of late). Does he look like an Arab to you?

Obama has produced so many gaffes—both about his personal life and about American history—that I’m beginning to wonder whether anything he says is something which he hasn’t learned rote from a script. However, allowing this fantasy about the Luo tribe--one born of ignorance regarding African countries--to mix in with real, live concrete issues regarding a prospective Barack Obama presidency hurts the opposition to that candidacy. That it p*sses me off is beside the point.

Make no mistake, Lamb’s novella is the origin of these rumors.

Comments

[Xrlq]

Of these, only one is serious.

One's not serious, either. His mother was an American citizen at the time of his birth, so even if he was born in Kenya, so what?

[baldilocks]

I don't know how that would work.

[Phelps]

This is why it matters:

If Obama were born outside the United States, one could argue that he would not meet the legal definition of natural-born citizen under because U.S. law at the time of his birth required his natural-born parent (his mother) to have resided in the United States for “ten years, at least five of which had to be after the age of 16.”

Ann Dunham was 18 when Obama was born – so she wouldn’t have met the requirement of five years after the age of 16.

[IronMike]

I keep being told that I couldnt' be president (as if I'd want to be) because I was born in Germany to American parents.

So where is it written the exact rules? I have a poster of the Constitution, but we all know what it says about "naturalized."

So, what is naturalized?

[Cricket]

Naturalized is born overseas and living here and taking the citizenship tests. OR being born here or born overseas of an American mother.

In the first instance, no way will a foreign born ever be elected POTUS, and in the latter instances, the citizenship of the mother and where she lived before and after the baby was born do matter.

[notropis]

I had quite a bit of experience dealing with the former INS with many permutations on the "citizen from birth" v "naturalized" v "non-citizen" about 10 years ago, and although it may take a judge to work out a specific case, the general rules of thumb are:

0. There's no legal distinction between "citizen born in the US" v "US citizen from birth." The question is one of "US citizen from birth" v "US citizen via a naturalization process."

1. If you were born in the US under any circumstances, you are a "US citizen from birth."

2. If both of your parents were US citizens at the time of your birth, regardless of where you happened to pop out, you are a "US citizen from birth."

3. If only one of your parents was a US citizen at the time of your birth, and you were born outside the US, it's a bit more iffy.

In my experience, when the mother was a US citizen at the time of birth, the child has always been recognized as a "US citizen from birth," with no need for a naturalization procedure. And this included several examples where the criteria in Phelps' citation were not fully observed. (One was a child born in England of a Sierra Leonean mother who had become a US citizen less than a year earlier, quite possibly post-conception. An INS officer confirmed that child as a US citizen from birth as a matter of course -- just stamped a form, no naturalization procedure required -- whether or not that agent was following the law.)

Where it's the father who's the US citizen, it's a different story. I have a friend who was a Peace Corps volunteer who fathered a child in Africa, and that child was considered a US citizen from birth. But I've heard of apparently identical stories, where not only was the child not considered a citizen, the child was also denied a visa to even visit the US, even after paternity was legally established.

So, best I can tell, IronMike, go ahead and run. I'll vote for ya.

[baldilocks]

Me too!

[Tully]

As Obama is the child of a citizen and a non-citizen, the question of "natural-born" arises IF (and only if) he was not born on U.S. soil. If he was born on U.S. soil, there's no question at all as to his being "natural born."

Seems to me that someone is simply using the birth certificate issue to create fog at this point--and that it could be cleared up in no time by producing the certificate. There is also the possibility that there's something remotely embarrassing on the certificate, and this flap is the indirect attempt to bring that out, even though the certificate confirms Obama's birth on U.S. soil. For example, someone could be trying to make an issue out of the "shotgun wedding" aspect of his parent's union. (As if Obama had any choice in the matter...)

Much relevant discussion on the "natural born" test by my law-talkin' co-bloggers over at Stubborn Facts, related to the attempts a few months ago to claim that McCain is not a "natural born" citizen.

[IronMike]

Thanks to all who will support my candidacy. Send your donations via PayPal to IronMikeforPrez2012(at)yahoo(dot)com. ;)

[Tully]

IronMike, if the Burge/Goldstein team isn't on the ballot in 2012, I'm on board!

[Tully]

Ritch certificate released to the public via DailyKos, of all "outlets." Make of that what you will.

[baldilocks]

Yeah I was checking it out. Will post.

[RagingViol]

Reminder folks, it matters not any more what the Constitution may say. The Courts have already told us that anyone captured on the field of battle--- enemies committed to the ruin and obliteration of the United States --- have rights indistinguishable from those of any natural-born or naturalized citizen of the U.S.

In other words, all those folks need to do is show up at a polling place and vote in a law requiring us to cut our own throats and fall down aspirating our own blood until death. They no longer need to risk death themselves, except maybe in their travel to get to a U.S. polling place they may be stabbed, machine-gunned, blasted to bloody pudding, or otherwise murdered by another less patient member of their own religion of peace.

Once here in the U.S., they are protected from deportation for illegal entry, protected from harm as they register (but why bother, since it's racist and bigoted to challenge whether a person wishing to vote is actually legally entitled to vote...) They will be protected by the courts and the police as they exercise the new universal franchise, and so bring about the demise of the pathetic experiment we call America.

Requiescat en Pace, United States of America.