Is Obama Legally Able to Serve as President?

Information is circulating over the Internet related to Barack Obama's legal eligibility to serve as President of the United States. We've received a ton of emails on the subject, so I thought I'd address it here.

Here's the crux of the Internet argument:

In order to be President of the United States, an individual must be a natural-born citizen. In order to be a natural born citizen, an individual must be born to two parents, at least one of which is a U.S. citizen residing in the United States. That parent must have resided in the United States for ten years prior to the individual's birth, at least five of which after the age of 16.

Barack Obama's father is not a U.S. citizen. His mother was a U.S. citizen at the time of his birth. However, she was 18 at the time and therefore only two years of her residence in the U.S. took place after the age of 16. Therefore, Barack Obama is not legally able to serve as President.

Our legal team reviewed the argument and provided some useful analysis that I thought I should share with you. Under 8 U.S.C. 1401(a), anyone born in the U.S. and subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S., is a U.S. citizen at birth. In addition, under 8 U.S.C. 1405, anyone born in Hawaii after April 30, 1900 is a U.S. citizen at birth. (Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961.) The argument questioning Obama's legal eligibility is wrong and apparently confuses persons born inside the U.S. with persons born outside the U.S., one of whose parents is a U.S. citizen and the other is a non-U.S. citizen (8 U.S.C. 1401(g)).

I know there are concerns about whether the birth certificate distributed by the Obama campaign is truly an official copy. The Obama camp will have to put to rest that question on its own. In the meantime, I haven't seen any reliable information yet to suggest Obama was born anywhere other than Hawaii, so he's a United States citizen and eligible to serve as our nation's president.

Until next week...



Tom Fitton
President

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