As an African, I have been intrigued by controversy around President Obama’s birth records:
1. If Obama’s mother was an American, doesn’t that make him an American citizen? I know a couple of African man / American women couples where I live - aren’t their children American citizens? Are their children disqualified from contesting for the presidency?
2. I don’t think it is in good taste to dwell on President Obama’s father’s womanising ways. If there is anything the World loves and respects about America, it is the fact that Americans respect and admire you for who you are and what you made out of your life, not your parents misdeeds.
Leave snobbery to the Brits, the Brits are hung up on class and are obsessed with whether your great grand daddy was a Yorkshire coal miner or a Norman knight.
3. The World is watching. You might not know it - the US is most popular in Sub-Saharan Africa. Many Sub-Saharan Africans are monitor US politics and are sophisticated enough to understand that Obama’s management of the economy leaves a lot to be desired. The Zambian born economist Dambisa Moyo has rightly criticised the management of major Western economies.
What we cannot understand is the obsession with Obama’s origins. I have a childhood friend, David. His parents had him in America and he works in America as a pharmacist. I have another childhood friend, Tony. Tony was born in Africa to an African father and an American mother. Both Tony and David work in America, are accepted in America and I believe are eligible to run for the presidency if they so desire.
If you are interested in public diplomacy and the perception of America in Sub-Saharan Africa, please handle this matter with care. Every one understands the frustration with the mismanagement of the American economy but the subliminal message the obsession over Obama’s origins sends really needs to be handled with utmost care.
I'm not, but welcome to FR.
Not necessarily. It depends on where the child was born and the marital status of the parents at the time of birth.
If the child is born in the US, he/she automatically becomes an American citizen thru birthright citizenship, i.e., jus solis, regardless of the citizenship of the parents. The parents could be illegal aliens and it wouldn't matter under our existing laws.
If the child is born abroad the following terms and conditions apply: Acquisition of U.S. Citizenship by a Child Born Abroad
2. I don’t think it is in good taste to dwell on President Obama’s father’s womanising ways. If there is anything the World loves and respects about America, it is the fact that Americans respect and admire you for who you are and what you made out of your life, not your parents misdeeds.
Sorry, but the President is a public figure. There will be public scrutiny of his life and his statements. In his autobiographical book, Dreams From My Father, A Story of Race and Inheritance Obama paints a far different picture of his father than the documents that have been released. If the President writes something that is untrue, shouldn't we call him to task on it? Check out this source documents and see for yourself.
What we cannot understand is the obsession with Obama’s origins.
Obama is obsessed with his African origins even though it appears from the recently released documents that his father never lived with his mother and that they essentially had no relationship three weeks after Obama was born. She went to Washington state and Obama Sr went to MA. Obama's father turned out to be just a sperm donor who had no relationship with his son. And Obama's mother sent him to live and be raised by his grandparents in Hawaii when he was 10. Obama was abandoned by both his mother and father. Maybe that contributed to his obsession about his roots and why is autobiography fixates on it.
If you are interested in public diplomacy and the perception of America in Sub-Saharan Africa, please handle this matter with care. Every one understands the frustration with the mismanagement of the American economy but the subliminal message the obsession over Obama’s origins sends really needs to be handled with utmost care.
How so? What does his election as President of the United States say about this country? And why is "the US most popular in Sub-Saharan Africa?"
Our constitution says that the president must be a natural born citizen. There are many threads about the topic on FR.
0bama is native born, not natural born, which makes him ineligible to be president.
Our very wise Founding Fathers stipulated in the Constitution that the President MUST be a NATURAL BORN CITIZEN - i.e. BOTH parents MUST be US citizens.
This was to protect our Republic from questionable loyalty of dual citizenship.
Imam Ozero fails the Constitutional test.
The Constitution is the absolute law of America.
No leftwing socialist trolls can change the Constitutional facts.
Imam Ozero is NOT elgible to be Presient.
Dude...where do you get off lecturing us about good taste and snobbery?
Most of us could care less what sub-saharan africa thinks.
If this was Sarah Palin’s father, or any other conservative politician’s father, there would be a non stop assault launched by the mainstream media.
Children born on USA soil from parentS(note plural) who are citizens of the USA are certainly eligible for POTUSA. I would take from what you said some of the young are not eligible. Even those persons who swear allegience to the USA and to forgo any such allegience to any other foreign nation to become USA citizens are not eligible for POTUSA,as the roots for eligibility go deeper for a natural born citizen to the already established allegience of the parents. I am well aware of this predicament. My brother(killed in the battle for Okinawa) and I a WWII vet were born in the USA of immigrant parents not natualized at our births. I have had to be satisfied with just being a USA citizen and I know my brother by letters was willing to die for just that right.
You have a very good point. The sins of the father are not the fault of the son, to be sure.
But President Obama had written (now there is concrete evidence he did not write it) a book glorifying the man who slept with his mum. People are now scoffing a little because Obama was so arrogant about his holy First World Beginnings. His African roots were considered by Americans as a good thing.
Why were we here so curious about his circumstances of birth? Because he hid all documentation of his birth. His opponent McCain was born outside the USA and showed the people his birth certificate, and Congress actually voted to consider him still eligible for the Presidency, because his father and mother were in Panama serving the US Navy at the time. Obama just said he was born in Hawaii, and shared a document online, but it was a document that in 1961 in Hawaii you could get for your child no matter where the child had been born.
Obama has hidden a lot of important documentation from his past that other Presidents have not hidden. Hiding things makes him look suspicious.
Believe me, when we mock or put down his behavior or his father’s we are not mocking Africans. We are angry at what our President is doing to our country. It is his arrogance and his apparent complete disrespect of the American people that make us angry enough to mock him. In this country we are supposed to be his boss, and he is supposed to be Serving Us. He is acting no different from a common dictator. We are upset over that.
And those new documents about his father’s behavior are showing not a proud brilliant African man but a slimy horny guy coming here married but sleeping with underaged girls right and left. And getting them pregnant. If a boorish American student comes to your country and whores around with your young girls you’d feel the same way.
Stick around and forgive us our mocking of Obama, ok?
but you have to realize...in this country, we have a history of a vigorous press...
our press historically has vetted, investigated, exposed,etc all avenues of our polititians...
every word studied...questioned...
every bill they ever signed...
their friends...
their marriage
their church...
but with bama, we had no such thing happen...
every facet of bama's life has been completely off limits...
he has not been called on to explain anything...
he attended a racist church for 20 yrs...nothing said...
he hung around known terrorists and communists in this country...nothing said...
he appoints communists as unelected czars....nobody questions anything
bama was FORCED on us but unknown forces, paid for by unknown billionaires from who knows where....
are we suspicious of him and his minions......you bet your life we are....and we have every right to do so....its the AMERICAN way...
Our Constitution needs to be followed with the utmost care. 0bama is not eligible to be president. It’s that simple.